The Department of Cardiology at Zealand University Hospital is the regional center of cardiology in Region Zealand. The department focuses on high quality and high professional standards with respect to all patient handling, on patient satisfaction and organizational efficiency.

The department takes responsibility for highly specialized treatments such as coronary angiography, elective percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), fractional flow reserve (FFR) measurements, pacemaker and implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) implantation and management, electrophysiological investigations, and radiofrequency ablation (RFA). Furthermore, patients with valvular heart diseases, infective endocarditis and grown-up congenital heart (GUCH) disease are both diagnosed and treated. In addition, genetic counselling of certain hereditary diseases is offered in the outpatient clinic.

The Department of Cardiology has 20 hospital beds in Køge and 36 beds in Roskilde, outpatient clinics in Køge and Roskilde. The catheterization laboratory is situated in Roskilde with five operating theaters for invasive cardiology fully equipped with modern X-ray equipment used for angiography, PCI and pacemaker implantations, including ICD and RFA procedures. The catheterization laboratory has video-connectivity to the tertiary center at Rigshospitalet with transmission options both from the operation room and from the videoconference-room. The outpatient clinics offer transthorakal and transesophageal echocardiography, stress tests, ambulatory monitoring, pacemaker control and nurse-managed clinics, including heart failure clinics.

Annually, the department has more than 25,000 outpatient contacts, 20,000 in-hospital days and 5,000 hospital discharges. It performs approximately 3,000 coronary angiographies, 1000 PCI and FFR measurements, more than 200 RFA procedures, and 800 pacemaker and ICD operations. The invasive activity is planned to expand further.

The department offers specialist assessment of cardiovascular issues to other hospital departments at Zealand University Hospital as well as to the acute triage section. The department also receives patients from other hospital departments in the region upon referral. Video-medical service between the hospitals and the digital echo-network can be used to support these functions. The department continuously has residents at on-site duty for acute patient care. The specialists and fellows are available on call all weekdays. Subspecialists in pacemaker and ICD treatment and PCI are available on call.

The medical staff in the department includes 30 senior cardiologists, 4 fellows and 16 residents at two physical locations with a total of 250 employees.

In addition to the clinical tasks, there is a focus on research, education and quality development.

The department has a research unit. The research activities of the Department are increasing, particularly within the fields of invasive investigations, ischemic heart disease, cardiac arrhythmia and related device treatment, heart failure, valvular disease, endocarditis, cardiac rehabilitation and patient involvement. More recently, the fields of epidemiological aspects and genetics in infective endocarditis have gained interest in national and international collaborating networks. Currently the department has one Professor, 2 PhD students, 1 post-doctoral nurse student, 10 study (project) nurses and multiple research-active physicians. The Department participates in several pre- and postgraduate training programs within cardiology and in other fields within internal medicine.

Collaborators: Municipalities and hospitals in Region Zealand; Other Danish hospitals; University of Southern Denmark, University of Copenhagen and Aarhus University; Thoraxzentrum, Rotterdam, Holland; Lund University Hospital, Sweden; Bern University Hospital, Schwitzerland; York University, UK; Haukeland University Hospital, Norway; Cardiovascular Center, Aalst, Belgium; Colombia University Medical Center and the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, New York, USA; University of Miami, Florida, USA; Duke University, Raleigh-Durham North Carolina, USA; International Center for Infectiology Research, CNRS, UMR5308 INSERUM U1111, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon,Université Lyon 1, Lyon, France.