A specialist team based in the Cardiac Centre at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals are celebrating being recognised as a centre of excellence following an accreditation.
The TAVI team (transcatheter aortic valve implementation) successfully completed the Edwards Benchmark Program on transcatheter valve care pathway.
The Edwards Benchmark Program is a systematic, evidence-based approach to optimizing In order to be accredited, centres enrol in the program, learn from experts, work as a team to identify areas of improvements and share experience with others. It sets standardized practices to achieve minimalistic TAVI with a focus on conscious sedation, recovery outside the intensive care unit, and a goal of next-day discharge. The Benchmark best practices cover communication, patient and staff education, decision making and clinical procedures. It is currently being utilized in more than 320 centres in the United States, Europe, Australia, Canada, Korea and New Zealand.
TAVI has been a feature of the Cardiac Centre’s work for some years and the benchmarking team is led by Dr Amr Gamal and Dr Andy Wiper. With 47 TAVI centres nationally, Blackpool’s is regarded as one of the best in the country.
Dr Gamal explained: “TAVI procedures help us work more efficiently and cut down the waiting list. We have reduced this from nine months to five to six months and we are aiming for four months. We are one of the few centres to offer same day discharge TAVIs which has the obvious impact on patient flow.
“In terms of development, we are hoping to take on more complex cases and more structural work. We perform TAVI work for two days per week and try to discharge patients the same day. We can offer less invasive, percutaneous “light touch” TAVIs with nurse-led conscious sedation.
“We are one of very few centres across the country to start percutaneous trans-axillary TAVIs which will increase the spectrum for patients with poor femoral arteries.”
Pictured here are: Sister Karen Jackson, Andrew Conroy, Ann Wareing, Collette Remmett, Rajitha Bandara, Christie Atkinson, Rebecca Jones, Dr Christopher Rozario, Dr Shajil Chalil, Dr Amr Gamal, Dr Andrew Wiper, Uways Ibraham.