The Cardiac Surgery Clinic at UMHAT "St. Marina" – Varna was established exactly 20 years ago, on 15th June 2005. This marked the beginning of the opportunity for patients from Eastern Bulgaria with life-threatening conditions to be saved. Until then, these patients in need of elective or emergency cardiac surgery due to severe conditions had to be transported to Sofia, often by air, or they could not receive adequate treatment at all.
Since that time, the Clinic has performed more than 8 000 major elective or emergency surgeries comprising almost the entire spectrum of adult cardiac surgery.
Today the only Cardiac Surgery Clinic in North-eastern Bulgaria is a state-of-the-art, highly-technological centre, where an experienced and highly qualified team of surgeons, resuscitators, cardiologists and healthcare professionals is working and is available to patients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The Clinic has a separate inpatient department, an intensive care unit for cardiac surgery patients, equipped for 24-hour continuous monitoring of vital signs in the immediate postoperative period and the corresponding intensive care, and an operating room block with two fully equipped operating theatres for performing cardiac surgeries with or without the use of a heart-lung machine.
The head of the Clinic Dr. Georgi Bachvarov explains, "In line with the latest trends, the decision on the treatment strategy for patients at UMHAT "St. Marina" – Varna is taken following daily consultations with a team of specialists called the Heart Team. The most common cardiac surgical treatment recommended by the Heart Team due to coronary atherosclerosis is aorto-coronary bypass, including operations with complete arterial revascularization and on a beating heart; this is followed by correction or prosthetics of the heart valves, with high-tech heart implants available to the patient, including the most advanced biological aortic and mitral valves, allowing their implantation in young people, sparing them the lifelong intake of anticoagulants (blood-thinning medications); and last but not least, elective and emergency surgery of the aorta and other rarer diseases."
The team of the Clinic has the latest generation of echocardiographic equipment, with the help of which the cardiologists perform accurate diagnostics of functional and morphological abnormalities affecting the heart and large vessels. This allows a detailed plan for performing the surgical intervention to be drawn up, and the risks to the patient to be minimised. The equipment in the operating theatres meets the standards of the major cardiac surgery centres worldwide. Moreover, the procedure for purchasing the latest generation extracorporeal circulation machine is underway. The thoracoscopic equipment and the complete set of instrumentation allow performing cardiac surgeries using minimally invasive approaches under three-dimensional visual control. The specialized equipment enables for surgical treatment of rhythm disorders.
In its capacity as a University Centre, the Cardiac Surgery Clinic at UMHAT "St. Marina" – Varna is closely involved in the education of students, trainees and postgraduates at Medical University - Varna, whereby renowned specialists pass on their knowledge and expertise to young physicians.
You can find further information on the Cardiac Surgery Clinic in the video here.
