Areas of interest

Mitral valve repair

It is one of the benchmarks of Service. Patients are regularly received from around the country and abroad to undergo this type of surgery. In all large series of mitral valve repair patients live longer and with fewer complications, except in some cases by a greater need for reoperation as a result of deterioration of valve function. Therefore, it is always preferable to recover the valve.

The repair of the mitral valve is, however, a technical challenge, requiring a longer learning curve. More than 80% of the Service operated valves, could be repaired and only about 20% needed to be replaced, which has not been achieved by any other surgical team worldwide. These facts are attracting patients from all regions of the country and some from abroad but also the reason for the visit of numerous foreign surgeons interested in observing and learning these techniques. Excellent results have been obtained and have been published in scientific journals of national and international expertise at conferences and other scientific meeting

Heart transplantation

A heart transplant is now recognized as a therapeutic modality for terminal heart failure.A first heart transplantation was performed in Cape Town by Christiaan Barnard in December 1967. This historical intervention was followed by many others in various centers throughout the world, but after a decade of relative duds, but in the early 80s, with the introduction of cyclosporine, witnessed the relaunch of this therapeutic modality. Since then more than one hundred thousand patients underwent cardiac transplantation with survival outcomes and unthinkable in the early days of this surgical activity. Currently, an estimated activity of more than 5000 transplants per year and expected survival is above 70% at 5 years and 50% at 10 years. Life expectancy for additional survivors of the operation is about 13 years. In Portugal, the first heart transplant was performed in February 1986, the team Queiroz e Melo Hospital in Santa Cruz.Subsequentemente, two other centers, the Santa Marta Hospital and the Hospital of St. John, started this activity. However, after the excitement of the early years, the number of heart transplants performed in Portugal over the last decade, from 1992 to 2002 averaged 11 per year, allocated among the three centers. Given that the estimated needs of heart transplantation in our country would be around 60 to 70 years, were satisfied least 20% of necessities. For this reason, and also because the last 5 years, no patient referred to our hospital for transplantation had been operated, the Center for Cardiothoracic Surgery of the University Hospital of Coimbra, decided to initiate a program of heart transplantation at this hospital, assuming, moreover, the tradition that belonged to this institution in the field of transplantation of other organs solids, including kidney and liver. The first patient was transplanted on 23 November 2003. By the end of 2010 had been transplanted 189 patients. (In Cardiac Transplantation - 5 years of business, article published in Portuguese Journal of Cardiology) Data relating to the functioning of heart transplantation at our center. By the end of 2012 had been transplanted 228 patients.

Other areas of interest in this center:

- Cardiac Surgery - Valvular and Coronary.

- Pediatric Cardiac Surgery.

- Classical and Thoracic Surgery Video-Assisted.