Heart Department

Congenital Heart Disease Unit

Our Congenital Heart Disease Unit structures care from the foetal stage to adulthood: cardiology and cardiovascular surgery covering the perinatal, paediatric, adolescent and adult stages in the field of congenital cardiovascular defects.

For this we have renowned specialists working in the field of diagnosis, cardiac imaging, catheterisation interventions and arrhythmology.

Our unit also performs re-interventions in adolescents and adults who had congenital heart disease repaired in childhood.

Likewise, working with experts in foetal cardiology, we support our work in caring for foetuses with cardiovascular diseases or disorders with the collaboration of the prenatal diagnosis unit and neonatal-paediatric unit.

Haemodynamics Unit

In our unit, children with congenital heart disease are treated by catheterisation in the haemodynamics room.

Interventional or therapeutic catheterisation is a less invasive procedure than surgery as it does not require thoracotomy/sternotomy or extracorporeal circulation, has a higher survival rate and involves a shorter hospital stay.

Our staff’s expertise and experience along with Vithas’ Haemodynamics Unit’s advanced facilities and equipment (angiocardiography equipment for obtaining high-quality images of the heart and vessels, polygraphy systems for monitoring patients and recording heart ventricle pressure, anaesthesia equipment to ensure child patients feel comfortable and safe during heart catheterisation procedures, etc.) allow us to solve an endless number of heart diseases that, otherwise, would have to be resolved with open​ surgery.

Vascular Surgery Unit

Vithas’ Angiology and Vascular Surgery Unit has been working for years to offer patients ever less aggressive techniques.

We are specialists in implementing different techniques and therapies for the diagnosis and monitoring of diseases related to the circulatory system, whether arterial, venous or lymphatic.

The fundamental aim of our specialists in angiology and vascular surgery is the prevention of possible heart attacks and embolisms caused by a vascular problem.

Our unit has extensive expertise in:

- Direct arterial limb surgery

- Varicose vein surgery

- Aneurysm surgery and carotid surgery

Our team of practitioners have extensive experience in performing minimally invasive surgery, such as the CHIVA technique, endolaser ablation and micro-phlebectomy, and complementary treatments for optimal results.

We continuously monitor the patient’s progress and complement treatment with periodic check-ups to monitor vascular risk factors and prevent disease progression.

Electrophysiology and Arrhythmia Unit

The Vithas Cardiac Electrophysiology Unit is responsible for diagnosing and treating heart rhythm abnormalities or arrhythmia.

Through a radiophysiological diagnostic study, our specialist will assess the heart’s reaction to controlled electrical signals.

This study makes it possible to determine what type of arrhythmia the patient has and where it is located, allowing us to implement the most appropriate treatment in each case.

Some of the most common therapies are cardiac ablation or the insertion of devices such as a subcutaneous pacemaker or the implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD).

Child Cardiology Unit​

The Child and Foetal Cardiology Unit assesses children and foetuses with suspected heart disease. The unit has modern ultrasound equipment for performing cardiac studies of foetuses and children.

The professionals running the unit are qualified, top-level specialists in child cardiology and have extensive experience in the field of congenital heart diseases and in the assessment and monitoring of children and foetuses with cardiological problems.

The Paediatric Sports Cardiology Unit is devoted to ruling out cardiovascular conditions in child athletes that appear healthy or are asymptomatic. Sometimes these athletes may have had symptoms, but this is very rare (as the patient usually starts out asymptomatic) and they are only of concern if these symptoms appear when they are performing physical exercise.

Our unit has all the necessary technology for screening and monitoring athletes (either healthy or with a known previous condition), including Holter equipment for assessing and monitoring arrhythmias and conventional ergometers/ergo-spirometers for cardiorespiratory functional assessments.

In Paediatric Haemodynamics, we also treat children with congenital heart disease using cardiac catheterisation in the haemodynamics rooms.

Our staff’s expertise and experience along with the Haemodynamics Unit’s advanced facilities and equipment (angiocardiography equipment for obtaining high-quality images of the heart and vessels, polygraphy systems for monitoring patients and recording heart ventricle pressure, paediatric anaesthesia equipment to ensure child patients feel comfortable and safe during heart catheterisation procedures, etc.) allow us to solve an endless number of heart diseases that, otherwise, would have to be resolved with open​ surgery.

Cardiac Rehabilitation Unit

Vithas’ Cardiac Rehabilitation Unit approaches its work from a multidisciplinary perspective, through a therapeutic programme that has the dual intention of improving the patient’s quality of life and the prognosis of the disease, in other words, reducing the chances of new complications.

This programme, which is personalised to each case, includes both physical and psychological treatment and controlling the risk factors of the disease, and takes place over two months, with three weekly sessions.

It is suitable for patients with any type of heart disease, congenital or acquired. The latter group includes patients with myocardial infarction, those who have undergone revascularisation with coronary artery surgery or PTCA (percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty) and stent implantation; those who have undergone surgery and, now, those suffering from heart failure due to cardiomyopathy, largely with pacemakers or ICDs.

All of them have been shown to improve their quality of life and delay mortality thanks to cardiac rehabilitation.