Cardio-vascular diseases

In the UZ Brussel the 4 departments of Cardiology, Cardiac Surgery, the Heart Rhythm Management Center and Vascular Surgery, decided to cluster their efforts into the cluster CHVZ in 2009. The objectives were to optimalize the clinical care of patients with cardio-vascular diseases. The research group "Centrum Hart-en Vaatziekten" - CHVZ - was created in 2010 with the objective to centralize the research in 2 main research topics and to extend further the fundamental and translational research in these 2 research lines: a. Cardiac Imaging for a Better Understanding of Cardiovascular Diseases b. Ion-channel Disorders: from Genetics to the Clinic The research group CHVZ is a young group without "research tradition" at the VUB. For this reason major collaboration was realized with two other research groups to obtain the objectives of fundamental and translational research. For cardiac imaging (research line 1) a collaboration with BEFY with its Small Animal Lab was started since 2006. Objectives were to elucidate the mechanisms of drug induced valvulopathy and to understand the mechanisms leading to the evolution from aortic valve sclerosis towards aortic valve stenosis. New objectives are to explore the possibilities of using imaging techniques with the use of nanobodies to characterize the vulnerable plaque in patients with atherosclerosis. For the ion-channel disorders (research line 2) we focused initially on the clinical presentation and treatment of the disease. However, we are actually exploring the genetics of these diseases more specifically of the Brugada syndrome,and are looking for parallels in ion-channel disorders in neurology. Using cardiac imaging we will also look for morphological abnormalities in these patients and explore the potential role of these mechanical abnormalities in the clinical presentation of the disease.