Safe and Sustainable Review into Children’s Cardiac Services

Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust welcomes the decision by the Safe and Sustainable Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts (JCPCT) to concentrate children’s cardiac surgery in fewer, larger centres and is delighted that the hospital has been one of the specialist centres selected to provide this service. We support the view that fewer, larger centres carrying out cardiac surgery will mean better outcomes for patients, with local centres continuing to provide follow up appointments close to the patients’ home.

We will work together with the Evelina Children's Hospital as the other designated London Centre, and will wish to engage and work closely with clinical staff at The Royal Brompton Hospital as their expertise will be vital to deliver the best possible service to children and their families into the future.

Information about Great Ormond Street Hospital’s Cardiac Services:

• Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) is the largest centre in the UK for children’s cardiac surgery, and the only paediatric hospital in the UK to offer the full range of National Commissioning Group (NCG) cardiac services (ECMO, bridge to transplant, heart transplant, tracheal services and pulmonary hypertension).

• The hospital has five paediatric cardiac surgeons on site and carries out more than 600 cardiac surgical procedures each year.

• Many children with heart problems also require the expertise of other clinical teams. GOSH has over 50 different clinical specialties under one roof and is therefore able to provide additional expertise as needed.

In June the hospital opened its new Wolfson Heart and Lung Centre which provides increased capacity and a much improved environment for patients, families and staff.

The Centre contains a new cardiac intensive care unit, cardiac general ward, cardiac day centre and a clinical investigations unit. Three new state-of-the-art operating theatres have been installed for cardiac and neurosurgery plus a hybrid angiography theatre. An extra-large lift has been built to help safely move children who need ECMO heart and lung support from the operating theatre to the cardiac intensive care unit.

The new cardiac intensive care unit contains 21 beds, an increase of around 30% from the old ward. There is also significantly more space around each bed to accommodate the equipment required, to give more room for staff providing clinical care or undertaking research and to ensure better privacy for families. There are three isolation rooms with lobbies which are used to protect vulnerable children from infection, eg post-transplant.

The new cardiac general ward provides high dependency and specialist care for children post-surgery, assessment or non-surgical management. There are 24 beds, an increase in capacity of 4 beds from the previous ward. There are more single rooms with en-suite facilities providing more comfort and privacy for patients and families. There is a play room for young children and an adolescent room for older patients.

The clinical investigations unit includes a separate unit for cardiac day patients. The tests carried out in the clinical investigations unit include echocardiograms (ECHO) to diagnose heart conditions, electrocardiograms (ECG) which enable prolonged monitoring of vulnerable cardiac patients and a range of different investigations for patients with lung conditions such as cystic fibrosis, cancer, severe asthma or those in need of bone marrow transplants.