Cardiothoracic Surgery at the RVC

The RVC is Europe's leading centre for pet heart surgery, having been at the forefront for more than a decade.

The RVC heart surgery programme are pleased to announce we will soon be in a position to accept non-UK based patients to the heart surgery waiting list. We have received many enquiries and requests for patient assessment and inclusion onto the waiting list over the past 2 years and will therefore need to plan this next phase carefully to allow us to do this efficiently whilst being as fair as possible to everyone, as we allocate the surgical slots currently available. We will be contacting all of those who requested updates, with further instructions. We kindly request that you allow us to contact you as we will detail the information we require for further assessment of your pet.

For those of you who are interested in heart surgery for your pet but not currently on our enquires list, please contact qmhaheartsurgery@rvc.ac.uk were we will be happy to take your contact details and will contact you for further information as soon as we can but this process is likely to take several months due to the length of our current enquires list.

Thank you for your interest in the RVC heart surgery programme

The first open heart surgery at the RVC took place in 2005. It was performed by Professor of Small Animal Surgery Dan Brockman. In 2016, the RVC became the first veterinary service in the world to successfully treat a dog's stenotic (narrowed) tricuspid valve with open heart surgery. The Labrador patient, Mabel, suffered from congenital tricuspid dysplasia. Dysplasia of the tricuspid valve can cause either leakage of blood or stenosis.

Heart valve dysplasia can affect the aortic, pulmonary, mitral or tricuspid valves of the heart. The most common one to affect dogs is mitral valve disease and the RVC is one of a few centres in world to correct the condition with surgery.