The changing demographics of the UK population have led to increased admission of elderly and more complex cardiac patients. This combined with the reorganisation of care required to provide primary PCI across cardiac networks, has caused a significant change in the acute cardiology workload for all acute hospitals.

 

In this document we present evidence that patients presenting with acute cardiac conditions who are managed in specialised cardiac wards have demonstrably better outcomes. However, a significant proportion of such patients are not currently managed within a cardiac service, leading to greater morbidity and mortality, and increased costs to the NHS.

 

The British Cardiovascular Society recommends that patients presenting with acute cardiac conditions should be managed by a specialist, multi-disciplinary cardiac team and have access to key cardiac investigations and interventions, at all times. All hospitals admitting unselected acute medical patients should have an appropriately sized, staffed and equipped Acute Cardiac Care Unit, where high risk patients with a primary cardiac diagnosis should be managed. Access to these Acute Cardiac Care Units should be open to all high risk cardiac patients and in particular, should not be restricted to patients with ACS.