Specialist valve clinic in a cardiac centre: 10-year experience.

Aims: Guidelines recommend specialist valve clinics as best practice for the assessment and conservative management of patients with heart valve disease. However, there is little guidance on how to set up and organise a clinic. The aim of this study is to describe a clinic run by a multidisciplinary team consisting of cardiologists, physiologist/scientists and a nurse. Methods: The clinical and organisational aims of the clinic, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and links with other services are described. The methods of training non-clinical staff are detailed. Data were prospectively entered onto a database and the study consisted of an analysis of the clinical characteristics and outcomes of all patients seen between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2018. Results: There were 2126 new patients and 9522 visits in the 10-year period. The mean age was 64.8 and 55% were male. Of the visits, 3587 (38%) were to the cardiologists, 4092 (43%) to the physiologist/scientists and 1843 (19%) to the nurse. The outcomes from the cardiologist clinics were cardiology follow-up in 460 (30%), referral for surgery in 354 (23%), referral to the physiologist/scientist clinic in 412 (27%) or to the nurse clinic in 65 (4.3%) and discharge in 230 (15%). The cardiologist needed to see 6% from the nurse clinic and 10% from the physiologist/scientist clinic, while advice alone was sufficient in 10% and 9%. Conclusion: A multidisciplinary specialist valve clinic is feasible and sustainable in the long term.

Murmur clinic: validation of a new model for detecting heart valve disease.

OBJECTIVES: We aimed to determine if auscultation or a point-of-care scan could reduce the need for standard echocardiography (transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE)) in community patients with asymptomatic murmurs. METHODS: Requests from general practitioners were directed to a new murmur clinic. Auscultation and a point-of-care scan were performed by a cardiologist between 1 October 2013 and 31 December 2014 and by a scientist between 21 July 2015 and 9 May 2017. RESULTS: In the first phase (cardiologist), there were 75 patients, mean age 54 (56 women), and in the second phase there were 100 patients, mean age 60 (76 women). In the total population of 175, abnormalities were shown on TTE in 52 (30%), on point-of-care scan in 52 (30%) and predicted on auscultation in 45 (26%) (p=0.125; 95% CI -0.02 to 0.29). The sensitivity of auscultation was not significantly different for the cardiologist (91%) as for the scientist (83%) (p=0.18; 95% CI -0.22 to 0.175) and the specificity was 100% for both. Accuracy was 97% for the cardiologist and 95% for the scientist. For the point-of-care scan, the sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values and accuracy were 100% for both cardiologist and scientist. CONCLUSION: Most patients in a specialist murmur clinic had normal auscultation and point-of-care scans and no additional valve disease was detected by standard echocardiography. This suggests that a murmur clinic is a valid model for reducing demand on hospital echocardiography services.