Barts and The London Heart Attack Centre | For patients, families and visitors | What to expect in hospital
What to expect in hospital
Staying in hospital
If you have had a heart attack and are treated at Barts and The London Heart Attack Centre, immediately after your procedure, you’ll be transferred to our cardiac coronary care unit (CCU). Here we can monitor your recovery closely and once you are considered well enough, we’ll talk to about when you can leave hospital. Approximately half of all our patients are discharged from hospital within 48 hours and two thirds by 72 hours.
Your family/carers are welcome to visit you on the CCU, although to respect other patients, we ask that the number of people visiting you is limited to two at a time. The length of visits will depend on your condition. Children may visit at the discretion of the sister/nurse in charge of the unit although please ensure that they are supervised by a responsible adult at all times.
We positively encourage our patients to invite friends and relatives to visit them in hospital. Visiting hours vary, but all wards are open to visitors between 4pm-8pm.
Although limited, overnight accommodation may be available for the relatives of patients being admitted to hospital. We can also provide accommodation for patients who have to travel a long way to attend hospital for complex investigations or treatment, but who do not need to be readmitted to a ward. Please ask a member of staff for details.
For more details about visiting your relative or friend in hospital, please click here. This will take you to Barts and The London’s main website.
Hospital facilities
For information about the facilities available at the hospital, please click here. This will take you to Barts and The London’s main website.
Visiting us for follow-up appointments
After you leave hospital, a follow-up appointment will be arranged for you to see a doctor. When you come to clinic for your appointment, there will also be cardiac rehabilitation nurses on hand to go through your exercise and recovery programme. While you are waiting to be seen you will be given some questionnaires to fill in to help us get feedback.
When you come to clinic, we will take a blood test to check your cholesterol and blood sugar levels. To do this accurately, it is important that you do not eat anything after midnight prior to your appointment (please continue to take your medications at the usual times with water). Please bring your medications or medication list with you to the clinic so that we can adjust these if required.
For details of how to find us, please click here.
