Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust is a partnership of two specialist hospitals which are known throughout the world for their expertise, standard of care and research success.
As a specialist trust we only provide treatment for people with heart and lung disease. This means our doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff are experts in their chosen field, and many move to our hospitals from throughout the UK, Europe and beyond, so they can develop their particular skills even further.
We carry out some of the most complicated surgery, and offer some of the most sophisticated treatment that is available anywhere in the world and treat patients from all over the UK and around the globe.
Our fetal cardiologists can perform scans at just 12 weeks, when a baby’s heart valve is just over a millimetre in size, and our clinical teams regularly treat patients well into their 90s.
Over the years our experts have been responsible for several major medical breakthroughs – performing the first successful heart and lung transplant in Britain, implanting the first coronary stent, founding the largest centre for cystic fibrosis in the UK, achieving a world first by implanting a Tendyne transcatheter mitral valve system to treat a leaking mitral heart valve, and pioneering intricate heart surgery for newborn infants.
We are the leading UK provider of respiratory care and are national leaders in the specialist areas of paediatric cardiorespiratory care, treatment of congenital heart disease, and cystic fibrosis.
Our patients are supported by adult intensive care units at both hospitals and a dedicated paediatric intensive care unit at Royal Brompton.
Our research
We have a worldwide reputation for heart and lung research. We work on numerous research projects that bring benefits to patients in the form of new, more effective and efficient treatments for heart and lung disease. We are also responsible for medical advances taken up across the NHS and beyond. Each year between 500 and 600 papers by researchers associated with the Trust are published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, such as The Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine.
Our main partner is the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College, London. We run additional research projects with other hospitals and universities in the UK and abroad.
Useful facts
- We undertake more than 174,000 outpatient appointments and supervise around 36,000 inpatient stays each year. Our specialists perform over: 2,800 angiograms / cardiac catheterisations; 2,200 thoracic surgery operations; 2,300 coronary angioplasties; 1,400 treatments for respiratory failure; and 1,000 heart bypass operations on an annual basis.
- We are Europe’s top-ranked respiratory research centre and our cardiac, cardiovascular and critical care teams are rated in the top three most highly cited health research teams in England.
- Our Heart Attack Centre at Harefield has pioneered the use of primary angioplasty for the treatment of heart attacks and has one of the fastest arrival-to-treatment times in the UK (23 minutes compared to a national average of 56), a crucial factor in patients’ survival.
- Our on-site fetal cardiology service enables clinicians to begin caring for babies while still in the womb; some are scanned at just 12 weeks, when the heart measures just over a millimetre.
- One of Europe’s largest units for the treatment of cystic fibrosis is based at Royal Brompton Hospital: we see nearly 1,000 patients with this condition.
- We are the country’s largest centre for the treatment of adult congenital heart disease, staffed by a specialist team including four full-time specialist consultants.
- We help almost 11,000 adults who have breathing problems caused by diseases such as COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and severe asthma.