The Cardiology department provides comprehensive services at both St Luke’s Hospital and Bradford Royal Infirmary.
We have a number of cardiologists providing the full range of adult cardiac services, including Tilt tests, CT coronary angiography stress echocardiography and trans-oesophageal echocardiography.
Waiting times are generally short with most investigations carried out within four weeks from GP referral.
The cardiology service deals with a range of adult heart disease such as chest pain, hypertension, palpitations, abnormal heart rhythms, blackouts, shortness of breath, heart failure, and infections of heart valves.
The specialty lead is Dr Paul Sainsbury – General Cardiology and Refractory Angina.
General cardiology outpatient clinics are held at St Luke’s Hospital, with clinic sessions available each day of the week. The department is able to deal with the full range of adult heart disease.
There are three rapid access clinics for specific disorders:
- The Rapid Access Chest Pain Clinic at Bradford Royal Infirmary, which accepts referrals for new onset chest pain and sees patients within 14 days.
- The Rapid Access Heart Failure Clinic at the St Luke’s Hospital outpatients department
- The Syncope Clinic where patients can see a specialist nurse and have the appropriate investigations. Test results are then reviewed by a consultant cardiologist and a management plan is formulated for each patient.
Consultant-led outreach clinics continue to bring services closer to patients. A consultant-led clinic is held at Addingham GP Surgery supported by on-site ambulatory ECG and echocardiography.
Plans to extend the Addingham model to other community locations are under development.
Inpatient services are based on ward 22 at Bradford Royal Infirmary and include a £2.3 million state-of-the art cardiac catheter laboratory and day-case suite which opened in October 2014.
Here we provide the full range of cardiology treatments, other than heart surgery which is carried out at Leeds Teaching Hospitals. We perform:
- Implantation of pacemakers and specialised devices such as implantable defibrillators and Biventricular pacemakers.
- Coronary angiography (radiological investigation of the coronary arteries).
- Coronary angioplasty (balloon dilatation and insertion of stents into the coronary arteries).
The unit also provides a specialist service for patients with refractory angina.
The Refractory Angina Clinic includes access to a consultant, specialist nurse, dedicated clinical psychologist and specialist treatments that are not available in most other hospitals, including enhanced external counterpulsation and coronary sinus stenting (we are one of only three centres in the country offering this procedure).
GPs are able to directly access a number of investigations to enable them to better manage cardiac disease in the community without the need for hospital referral, where appropriate.
Our service has two main aims. The first is to help you learn to live with your angina. This may sound a strange thing to say when you have probably been living with your angina for many years, but all patients with angina have significant misconceptions about it which in turn influence how they live on a day-to-day basis. By helping you understand angina better you will become less afraid of it and enjoy a better quality of life.
The second is to improve your angina where possible through a variety of treatments. It is important to realise that no treatment is ever guaranteed to get rid of your symptoms entirely. Patients with Refractory Angina are likely to have symptoms to some degree for the remainder of their life.
Our talented and compassionate staff care for a diverse population, which is what makes Bradford such a special place to work. Choosing the right people is key to our success. If you think you’ve got what it takes, please contact us by email at careers@bthft.nhs.uk to discover more about our latest opportunities.
