Faro Hospital now has a Multidisciplinary Heart Failure Unit

Álvaro Almeida, executive director of the National Health Service ( SNS ), witnessed, last week, the start of the new service at Faro Hospital: the Multidisciplinary Heart Failure Unit.

This is a response that covers patients with this pathology, allowing acute episodes to be treated in a Day Hospital, avoiding hospitalizations or use of the Emergency Department, as well as enabling early reassessment after an episode of decompensation.

“This is a sign that improvement can be gradual, it can be slow, but continuous. This moment also marks the goal of an increasingly better NHS, always focused on responding to the needs of the population and benefiting from the efforts of all of you, those who work for the NHS”, said Álvaro Almeida during the opening of the Multidisciplinary Heart Failure Unit.

In this response, patients are assessed by a multidisciplinary team of specialists, who define their individualized therapeutic plan.

The new service of the Algarve Local Health Unit (ULS) is coordinated by cardiologist Raquel Menezes Fernandes and includes Internal Medicine doctors Sérgio Gonçalves, Joana Pestana, Pedro Mendonça and Catarina Madeira, Nephrology doctor Ana Teresa Domingos, as well as nurse Maria do Carmo Campaniço.

This Multidisciplinary Heart Failure Unit is an added value for the patients it supports, ensuring specialized care and adequate monitoring, which allows treatments to be adjusted to the patients' needs, preventing complications, avoiding emergency room visits and reducing hospitalizations.

Remember that heart failure is a chronic disease with no cure, but it can be controlled after diagnosis through the use of medication, allowing you to live longer and better.

During the visit, the executive director took the opportunity to get to know some services, namely the General Emergency Service, the Intensive Care Unit, the Stroke Unit and the Internal Medicine Service.

The visit was accompanied by the Board of Directors of ULS Algarve.