Cardiovascular care

1. The question that comes before all the others

In most areas on this site, the decision to travel is separable from the clinical decision. Here it is not. Long-haul flight, altitude, time-zone disruption and the logistics of getting to an unfamiliar hospital are themselves relevant to a cardiac case, and the only person who can weigh them is the cardiologist currently treating you.

So the sequence is: ask them first, then ask everything else. If the answer is that travel is inadvisable, that is the answer, and no arrangement we could make changes it.

The names you will see

Institutions and agencies use the procedure names below. Knowing what the abbreviations stand for makes correspondence considerably shorter. None of this says anything about whether a procedure is suitable for you.

2. What an assessment turns on

• Recent imaging, angiography, CT angiography or echocardiography, as DICOM with the report. Note the date of each; cardiac studies are treated as perishable.
• Functional testing, stress testing or equivalent, where it has been done.
• The full medication list with generic names and doses. Anticoagulation and antiplatelet therapy in particular change what can be planned and when.
• Comorbidities, renal function, diabetes, respiratory disease. These shape both the plan and the risk discussion.
• Previous procedures: what was done, when, and what was implanted. If you have a device card, it matters; bring it.

We translate all of it exactly, including findings you might prefer were softer. The rules we work to are on preparing your records.

3. Devices are a separate line

As in orthopaedics, what goes in you is itemised separately from the fee for putting it there, and the choice moves the total materially. Ask which stent, valve or device is planned, by which manufacturer, at what price, and what the alternatives are. Ask for the documentation to take home, a cardiologist anywhere in the world will want to know exactly what is in you.

4. Follow-up is the weak seam

Cardiac care does not end at discharge. Medication is adjusted, function is rechecked, and devices are monitored. Cross-border care has its weakest point here, and it is entirely avoidable if it is arranged in advance.

Before you travel, settle: who provides follow-up once you are home, what they will need from the treating institution, and in what language. Ask the institution here for the discharge summary and the device documentation in a form your own doctor can use, and where the English version is partial, we translate the rest in full.