Cardiovascular

The Cardiovascular research theme within GM CLRN's Vascular Super Group is made up of studies across the breadth of cardiovascular conditions, including: arrhythmias; heart failure; devices; imaging; coronary intervention; surgery; transplantation; dyslipidaemia; hypertension; and acute coronary syndromes.

Tertiary centres
Greater Manchester has two tertiary cardiovascular centres; one at Central Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (CMFT) and the other at University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust (UHSM). This ensures that cardiovascular research can recruit patients with a variety of conditions who are undergoing both interventions and surgical procedures. See details here for the ADVISA MR study where we were the top two recruiting centres from 23 sites in 11 countries.

Cardiovascular investigators
We also have cardiovascular investigators at: The Pennine Acute Hospital NHS Trust; Stepping Hill Hospital at Stockport NHS Foundation Trust; and Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust. These investigators are recruiting patients to portfolio studies and cardiovascular research activity includes a good mix of academic and commercial studies with links to Primary Care sites to help with recruitment.

Greater Manchester cardiovascular facts

• On average we investigate 1000 cases of chest pain per 100,000 population per year (approximately 3% of all Emergency Department and 28% of all acute medical admissions).
• One quarter of these are acute myocardial infarction, half ischaemic heart disease with unstable angina and 25% are non-cardiac.
• Patients with ST elevation myocardial infarction are provided primary PCI at two tertiary centres.
• UHSM and CMFT are regional tertiary cardiothoracic centres. Together they also have 4000 patients with NYHA class II or greater heart failure, and perform nearly 3000 percutaneous coronary interventions per year.
• Specialists in these centres maintain a high volume of ablation procedures for arrhythmias, transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), and implantation of devices, and there is expertise in cardiac MRI. The surgical services (both clinical and academic) are leaders in cardiac and vascular surgery, including diagnosis and management of aortic aneurysms.
• Stockport NHS Foundation Trust pioneered the use of Troponins and BNP as routine cardiac diagnostic tools and subsequently was influential in promoting the adoption of these across the North West.
• Collaborative research projects involving several thousand patients continue to assess the diagnostic and epidemiological implications of these markers with NIHR CLARHC funding. More recent work has investigated the use of FABP involving over 470 cases with Acute Coronary Syndromes as well as a further 800 cases at CMFT with a subsequent combined evaluation of over 20 biomarkers in these subjects.