We knew that this was the beginning of something big. We knew that we were going to bring all our
forces together and we were really hoping to have a place where patients come in, and instead
of seeing one physician for one particular problem, see a group of physicians for their
cardiovascular care and get the best care possible. One of the things that's important to recognize
about the Sulpizio, it's not just a center, it's a place where we can offer multidisciplinary
state-of-the-art individualized care for every patient. And the day we wheeled our first patient
into the Sulpizio was very exciting for all of us. Our hope was that no patient
in San Diego County would ever have to leave the San Diego area for any cardiovascular care. And we
accomplished that within the first couple of years and have just surpassed it by high flying colors.
When the Sulpizio opened up we built 7
dedicated invasive and interventional laboratories. We have the first hybrid
operating room with a cath lab built into an operating room in the region. We also
have 2 dedicated electrophysiology labs and four interventional suites.
During our decade of opening at the Sulpizio we've had many firsts,
many innovations, many things that we have done for the first time
in the country and the first time in the world. One of those early successes was in 2013
when we first performed the first robotically assisted coronary stenting procedure anywhere in
the West Coast. Since that time over the past 8 years we have become the largest robotic assisted
angioplasty program in the world. We train people from around the world and what that particular
procedure does is it enables us to treat patients with a sub millimeter level precision of
care.
You know there are multiple areas within the Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center where we
require a multidisciplinary team to approach the patient, but probably the best example of this is
the CTEPH program and the pulmonary endarterectomy program because here you have specialties not just
from cardiology and cardiac surgery where we work very closely together, but also from pulmonary
medicine, pulmonary vascular medicine, radiology, cardiac anesthesia and of course our staff. We
now do over 200 BPA procedures a year matching very much our PTE volume of about 200 a year
and we've done over 500 procedures. We're the leading center in the United States for BPA
as well and we are training centers all over the country in how best to do that procedure.
One of the most distinguished accomplishments was the establishment of the Step Family Rehab
Center. Now we have multiple cardiovascular centers that are providing excellent care and that really
precipitated the notion to form a cardiovascular institute. And it's not just clinical care. We've
expanded, our training programs at any given time we're training 30 fellows and finally I would
say the third leg of that stool is our research enterprise. We have over 30 million dollars a year
in NIH research support for our research mission. I would say the way to think about the future
of UC San Diego and our cardiovascular program is the cardiovascular institute, under which
multiple clinical care centers, research programs and training and fellowship programs reside.
Our pulmonary thromboendarterectomy program, which is a portion of our overall CTEPH program,
has been known around the world to be the number one center and we were the gold standard.
And in 2019 we reached a milestone of 4,000 of these operations.
This is by far the largest number around the world and when you hit a milestone like that
you reflect back and realize none of this would have been possible without the team around you.
We never lost a step during the pandemic. Our staff was extraordinary and made sure that
patients with cardiovascular diseases in San Diego continued to get
the same standard of care that was there before the pandemic hit.
In July 2021 our lung transplant program was ranked number one
in the country and our heart transplant program was ranked number two in the country
in terms of outcomes quality and survival after transplantation.
One of the things that makes all of us very proud is since opening of the
Sulpizio we have continued to rank in the top 50 cardiovascular programs in the United States.
We never ranked in the top 50 prior to opening of the center
and for our patients what it tells them is they can come to the Sulpizio, they're going to get top
world-class, state-of-the-art care day in day out and it's highly consistent. And now the question is
what do we see in the future? Since the day we opened we've expanded and we've expanded more
but we really do need more expansion, that's what I see in the future of the Cardiovascular
Institute, a bigger center and continuation of the extraordinary care that we provide.
As I look forward to the next 10 years what I would like to see is we should be one of the top
5 centers so for every patient, every researcher, every trainee out there in
the world when they think of any of the top programs in cardiovascular diseases,
they should be thinking of us, the UC San Diego Cardiovascular Institute. But over the next decade
we want people around the world and around the country to all come to San Diego to get our
expertise.