EP Lab Digest - January 2008 - (Page 12) 12 SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW JANUARY 2008 Spotlight Interview University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf Professor Stephan Willems, Director of Clinical Electrophysiology at the University Heart Center, and Daniel Steven, MD University Heart Center at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf Hamburg, Germany he University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf was originally founded in 1884. It later became a university hospital in 1934.With 14 centers today, and 80 clinics, the hospital provides medical treatment to patients throughout Germany and worldwide, and the large staff of physicians and scientists carry out extensive medical research. As a result, the hospital’s medical treatment, science and research have an excellent worldwide reputation. Patients from around the world come to the hospital to undergo medical treatment where they will receive state-of-the-art medical care by a staff utilizing the latest developments in medicine. The hospital is part of the larger University Medical Center, which is the largest among Hamburg’s hospitals with approximately 1,400 hospital beds.The medical center treats approximately 50,000 inpatients annually and approximately 250,000 outpatients as well as 50,000 emergency patients. Following is a look at the University Heart Center at the University Hospital HamburgEppendorf. Professor Stephan Willems and Dr. Daniel Steven discuss with us the inner workings of clinical electrophysiology and the latest advancements in medical technology that enable them to provide their patients with the utmost in care and accuracy during complex cardiac procedures. T What is the size of your EP lab facility and number of staff members? What is the mix of credentials at your lab? We currently have two dedicated EP labs; they are used only for interventional EP studies. Currently there are six physicians and eight nurses working in the two labs. When was the EP lab started at your institution? The first EP studies were started back in the 1980s.The number and variety of ablation procedures are still increasing. What types of performed at Approximately performed each procedures are your facility? how many are week? In our lab, we treat all arrhythmias. Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the dominant tachycardia treated in our facility. Of the 1,000 ablation procedures that we performed in 2007, approximately 530 of these were for AF; the other 500 procedures consisted of ventricular tachycardia (VT) and other SVT ablations. We reserve one day a week for ablation of complex arrhythmias such as VT or ablation procedures in children. In addition to the high volume of AF procedures we perform, we are seeing an increase in VTs in our lab. What is the primary goal of your program (AF ablations, lead extractions, BiVs, etc.)? Our primary goal is the ablation of complex atrial and ventricular tachycardias. As a part of the University Heart Center, we also perform device implantations. From left to right: Claudia Mehl (administration for patient scheduling and clinical studies), Dr. K. Müllerleile, Katrin Heitmann (nurse), Dr. Imke Drewitz, Dr. Thomas Rostock, Prof. Stephan Willems, Melanie Hempel (nurse), Dr. Helge Servatius, Dr. Boris Lutomsky, Carola Franke (personal assistant to Prof. Wilems), Nicola Obertop (nurse), Dr. Daniel Steven, Nicola Sander (nurse). Is the EP lab separate from the cath lab? How long has this been? Are employees cross-trained? We now have two labs dedicated for See SPOTLIGHT page 14
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