Hospital Clínic de Barcelona
About Hospital Clínic
Hospital Clínic of Barcelona is a public university hospital with a centuries-long history. With more than 5,500 employees, it is one of the leading healthcare centres in Spain and the first in scientific production. The hospital offers quality care, high-level excellence and competitive biomedical research and a high teaching commitment to train professionals. All of this is included in an excellent balanced management with the aim of offering society a humanized cutting-edge medicine.
As National Reference Centre, our institution has the following characteristics:
- National coverage, providing equal care to any patient, regardless of their origin/place of residence.
- Multidisciplinary team care.
- Ensures the continuity of care along the different stages of life (foetus–child–adult) and between different levels of care.
- Continuous process and outcome evaluation.
- Provides education to other healthcare professionals.
- Performs local and collaborative research, at a national and international level.
The Hospital has been recognised as National Reference Centre (CSUR) for the diagnosis and management of rare cardiac diseases as described in the Royal Decree 1302/2006, following thorough auditing by representatives of the Spanish Ministry Social Services and Equality. This recognition by the Ministry, on top of the initial extensive auditing, requires yearly monitoring of process and outcome indicators to maintain competence and expertise. Finally, Hospital Clinic is a referral centre for cardiac transplantation, complex cardiac surgery and complex ablation, receiving patients from all Spain.
About the Centre for rare and complex heart disease
The Cardiogenetics Unit in Hospital Clínic was established in 1994 and has been managing patients and families with primary electrical diseases and cardiomyopathies ever since. It was recognised as a National Reference Centre by the Spanish Health Ministry in 2010. There has been a steady increase in the number of outpatient visits with >1500 evaluations in 2019 and 2020. Through a multidisciplinary team, involving cardiologists, clinical and molecular geneticists, we aim to diagnose, stratify risk and provide appropriate and timely management in patients clinical manifestations or in carriers of pathogenic mutations while asymptomatic. The team is supported by a pathologists, experts in cardiac imaging, cardiac electrophysiologists, genetic counsellors, cardiac and thoracic surgeons, gynaecologists/obstetricians, paediatric cardiologists, neurologists, psychiatrists and psychologists, and pathologists. This integral approach allows the holistic management of our patients and their families. Furthermore, through a long-established official collaboration with the Hospital Sant Joan de Deu, we ensure that there is a smooth continuum in the care of our patients and their family members. For the diagnosis, we offer a detailed clinical assessment by experts in Cardiogenetics, high precision imaging, non-invasive assessment (through high-resolution electrocardiographic monitoring, stress testing and pharmacological challenging), biochemical and histological evaluation (including state-of-the-art genotyping), hemodynamic assessment and electrophysiological testing. For the management, we are internationally renowned in the field of catheter ablation of cardiac arrhythmias (including complex substrates), cardiac implantable devices, interventional cardiology and cardiac surgery (including complex adult congenital disease, septal myectomies, valvular reconstructions, left ventricular assistance devices and heart transplantation). As a result of our continuous contribution and collaboration in the field at a national and international level, the members of the team have been part and coordinated international guidelines and expert position papers dealing with rare diseases of the heart.
Dr. Elena Arbelo