All heart transplant operations have been suspended at the renowned Papworth hospital while an investigation is held into an unexpectedly high death rate during the past year. A team from the Healthcare Commission, the government's inspectorate, has been called in to work out why seven out of 20 adult patients undergoing heart transplants have died in the past 12 months within 30 days of their operation. That equates to a 35% death rate.
"It's expected 10% of heart transplant patients die within 30 days," said chief executive Stephen Bridge. "We've normally been around 7%, so below the national average.
"We are talking comparatively small numbers, but it was agreed it would be sensible for us to invite the Healthcare Commission to undertake an external review. If there are any improvements, we will implement them."
The Cambridge hospital is one of five in the UK where heart transplants are carried out. In a statement, the hospital said transplants would be "paused" while the review - expected to take up to two weeks - was carried out.
"Heart transplants are inherently high-risk, complex procedures performed on a relatively small number of patients and the number of operations likely to be affected is therefore small."
The investigators will be looking at the quality of the care that transplant patients receive and will examine case notes and procedures at the hospital.
Those close to the investigation say the apparent excess of deaths could be a blip. Heart transplants are difficult and complex procedures and, at the very best centres, are carried out on patients who are inevitably seriously ill. Sometimes patients have to wait a long time to be offered a donor heart, their condition deteriorating all the while.
The first successful heart transplant in the UK was carried out in 1979 by Sir Terrence English at Papworth. In 1984, his team went on to carry out Europe's first heart and lung transplant. Only last year the hospital made the record books again with the first transplant of a "beating heart".
But Papworth has long said that its facilities are becoming unsuitable for such pioneering work. They are performed, it says on its website, "on a cramped site of buildings, many of which were not designed for the delivery of modern healthcare, and this is threatening to compromise the high standards and patient outcomes for which the hospital is renowned."
The Department of Health reviewed Papworth's proposals to move to the Cambridge biomedical campus next to Addenbrooke's hospital, rather than improve on the existing site. In June it got permission to proceed to the outline business case stage, but building work, if all goes well, will not start until 2010.
