The East Midlands Congenital Heart Centre

Following the report of a national panel, NHS England have made the decision to stop children’s heart surgery at Glenfield. You can read NHS England’s letter and the Trust’s response.

Services need to reach standards about numbers of surgeons, number of operations they each conduct, and which other services are on the same site.  Leicester does not meet all the requirements (but none of the 14 other services nationally do either), and the report believes that we are unlikely to do so. 

UHL believes that the service offered here is high quality, and that forthcoming NICOR data will show that our outcomes are among the best in the country.   The Understanding Children’s Heart Surgery Outcomes site shows that for children aged 0-16, there is no evidence that chances of survival in the hospital are different from predicted.

Closing children’s heart services here will have an adverse effect on paediatric intensive care services here and elsewhere in the East Midlands, and on the ECMO service here, which is nationally very important.   Locally, patients and their families will have to undertake much longer journeys for treatment and care. 

So, there is a campaign at UHL to keep children’s heart services, and all staff receive weekly updates.   Senior Trust staff have met with local and national government and local MPs.  There has been much local media coverage.

The Clinical Librarian Service will help the campaign by locating, if needed, supporting literature or statistics.  I, the Clinical Librarian for cardiology and cardiac surgery, have added the campaign logo (above) to all my emails!

Read more about UHL’s campaign.  There is also a petition to Parliament asking for a public review, which you might like to consider signing.