The Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospital

Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospital is the largest specialist heart and lung center in the UK and one of Europe's leading cardiothoracic centers. Royal Brompton Hospital has been ranked among the world's top 10 cardiology centers by Newsweek. The Royal Brompton campus houses over 2,200 staff, 5 dedicated operating theaters, a hybrid operating room, 4 catheterization laboratories, and 312 beds. It is the UK's leading center for cystic fibrosis treatment and care, receives patients nationally for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pioneered Europe's first adult congenital heart disease treatment team (now the UK's largest), and provides specialized adult and pediatric intensive care with one of the country's few professors of intensive care medicine. The Harefield campus employs over 1,300 staff, with 5 operating theaters, 4 catheterization laboratories, and 168 beds dedicated to cardiac and thoracic surgery, transplantation, and adult intensive care. The hospital gained worldwide fame through the work of Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub, who pioneered the UK's heart transplant program in the 1980s. Yacoub was a friend and confidant of Diana, Princess of Wales, whose iconic masked visit to the hospital became one of her defining images. Landmark achievements include the world's first direct pulmonary valvotomy (1947), the UK's first heart transplant and coronary angioplasty (1980), the world's first combined heart-lung transplant (1983), the UK's first coronary stent (1988), the UK's first robot-assisted heart surgery, and Europe's first artificial heart transplant. Each year, hospital surgeons perform 2,400 coronary angioplasties, 1,200 coronary artery bypass grafts, and treat 2,000 respiratory failure patients. Website: www.rbht.nhs.uk