Cardiovascular

The Cardiovascular Clinical Academic Group (CAG) provides extensive heart services for patients in south east London and Kent, hosts a British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence, and delivers outstanding training for clinicians and researchers.

Cardiovascular

Our Cardiovascular CAG integrates the School of Cardiovascular Medicine & Sciences of King's College London and the adult cardiology, cardiac surgery and vascular surgery units at Guy's and St Thomas' and King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts.

The CAG provides expert heart services for patients across south east London and Kent, hosts a British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence, and delivers outstanding training for clinicians, undergraduates and researchers.

We are also developing King’s Health Partners Cardiovascular, realigning and integrating our cardiovascular services and academic activities to form a new type of clinical-academic network to transform service delivery and generate research advances to revolutionise cardiovascular prevention and care.

Read the latest news from our Cardiovascular CAG.

Our clinical strengths

Our clinical services are amongst the UK’s most extensive and comprehensive. Our patients receive dedicated care and expert treatment appropriate to their needs:

  • innovative cardiac surgery
  • interventional cardiology
  • minimally invasive heart valve replacement
  • electrophysiology/cardiac rhythm management
  • heart failure
  • inherited cardiac conditions
  • adult congenital heart disease
  • primary angioplasty for heart attacks
  • vascular surgery including endovascular intervention
  • non-invasive cardiology including multi-modality imaging
  • outpatient services including community outreach.

Our vascular surgery network is the largest in England, aiming to deliver comprehensive, excellent care to a large population. By working jointly and supporting the south east London and Kent vascular network, complex surgery is delivered by expert teams at hub sites while other services are delivered as close to patients as possible by an integrated team.

Our heart failure programme brings together integrated community-to-hospital clinical services, the BHF Centre of Research Excellence, inter-disciplinary PhD training, integrated clinical academic training, multi-centre clinical trials and an innovative community service.

The treatment of heart valve disease is another internationally leading area. Our innovative transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) service is complemented by the world’s premier heart valve educational meeting. We also have an exemplar value based healthcare Infective Endocarditis programme and a large endoscopic mitral valve surgery service.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUULG9x2YG0

Watch the above video about imaging transforming care for cardiac patients

Education

We deliver innovative education and training:

  • high profile non-clinical and clinical PhD programmes
  • Masters programme
  • academic trainee programmes in cardiology, clinical pharmacology, and vascular surgery
  • specialist cardiology, cardiac surgery, vascular surgery and clinical pharmacology training.

Key educational achievements:

  • delivering postgraduate Cardiovascular MPhil/PhD/MD programmes
  • Lead Provider for cardiology SpR training in south London
  • contributing to undergraduate medical student and bioscience training.

Research

We believe that swiftly translating basic science into clinical advances results in improved patient care. The King’s College London British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence integrates world-class basic and applied research. As one of the two largest such centres in the UK, the Centre uses state-of-the-art research methodology to analyse cardiovascular disease and develop new diagnostic methods and treatments. This is complemented by the more clinical research that we undertake in the Biomedical Research Centre.

Some of our most significant research advances are in heart failure, heart muscle and vascular disease, and advanced image-guided interventions. For example, we have identified a new biomarker of cardiac damage that is superior to the existing test, which is going through the translational pipeline from discovery to clinical evaluation.

Innovations and achievements

  • Read about how our clinical academic collaborations are improving the lives of our patients in Innovation Impact Stories
  • See 70 examples of key achievements from across our partnership in our CAGraphics booklet.