The medical concept boasts a special feature that is as simple as it is successful: Patients of all ages and with various heart conditions are treated in one place. The University Heart Center is a central location, bringing medical experts from various fields together to diagnosis and treat cardiovascular diseases and provide the best care possible in a close-working, interdisciplinary environment.

A Few Special Features:

The program kicked-off in 2019 and since then, many patients have successfully undergone artificial heart transplants at the University Heart Center of Upper Austria. Professor Dr. Andreas Zierer (JKU Faculty of Medicine and head of Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery) remarked: "Interdisciplinary collaboration at the Kepler University Hospital means we can now treat heart patients using the latest in high-tech treatment methods."

Specialists at the Central Radiology Institute perform hybrid surgical interventions on patients at the University Heart Center in aorta in the thorax and abdomen if, for example, it is pathologically dilated (aneurysm) or torn (dissection). Prim. Prof. Dr. Franz Fellner (head of the Central Radiology Institute as well as a researcher at the JKU Faculty of Medicine) added: "The newly created framework has ideal conditions and supports collaboration for hybrid surgeries. The Kepler University Hospital is establishing itself as a center of regional and inter-regional importance, particularly when it comes to emergency surgeries."

A pre-operative appointment to talk with patients about the anesthesia, for example, will help patients better understand the surgical procedure. Procedures such as "patient blood management" would test patients before surgery for conditions such as anemia, for example. An anemic patient would then be treated with iron supplements and EPO. The new University Heart Center of Upper Austria creates space to involve medical specialists from many different areas of medicine. Professor Dr. Jens Meier, JKU faculty member and head of the Department of Anesthesiology and Operative Intensive Care Medicine, emphasizes: "Creating the University Heart Center of Upper Austria allows us to treat our patients in a single location. Nowadays, treating heart disease effectively means involving a variety of different areas of medicine to come together. The more these areas can collaborate together and the better the interfaces, the smoother the treatment process for our patients."