Nantes University Hospital

Healthcare provider: Nantes university hospital (NUH) has more than 3,000 beds spread over 7 institutions and receive about 300 000 patients per year. NUH provides routine as well as highly specialized medical and surgical services, 24-hour casualty patient care and alternatives to traditional hospitalization (day hospital care, remote medicine, networks set up with the region’s hospitals and the city’s clinics and doctors). NUH provides a complete range of treatment: general medicine, surgery, obstetrics, follow-up and rehabilitative care, long-term treatment and psychiatry. NUH is a national centre of reference and excellence in several domains: cardiology, transplants, oncology, cellular and gene therapy, neuroscience, serious burns unit, etc. It actively contributes to advances in medical and pharmaceutical science through its research activity. NUH also runs prevention and health education initiatives. NUH is a partner of the university’s schools of medicine, dentistry and pharmacy and is actively involved in (post-)graduate teaching as well as training of hospital and general practitioners and health care professionals.

Centre for rare and complex heart diseases: The Reference Centre for Hereditary Cardiac Diseases of Nantes hospital, coordinated by Prof. Dr. Vincent Probst, is labelled since 2004. The centre is composed of 3 physicians specialized in arrhythmic diseases (Prof. Dr. Probst, Prof. Dr. Le Marec, and Dr. Gourraud), a clinical project manager, 4 nurses, 2 clinical research assistants and one secretary. The referral centre is part of the national network CARDIOGEN since its creation in 2014 and works in closed collaboration with 22 French regional centres.

The main missions of the referral centre are to:

  • ensure that all patients benefit of optimal management
  • provide a clear medical information to patients and health professionals
  • ensure that familial screening is correctly performed
  • coordinate and participate to national and international studies which aim to improve understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms of hereditary arrhythmic diseases in collaboration with INSERM 1087/CNRS 6291 unit directed by Richard Redon.

Prof. Dr. Vincent Probst is a cardiologist and the representative member of the Nantes University Hospital in ERN GUARD-HEART.