About Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Trust

It is a disturbing fact that heart disease is still the biggest killer in the UK. More than 125,000 UK residents die from the disease each year, equating to approximately one in four men and one in six women.

The Cardiothoracic Centre (CTC) in Liverpool provides heart and lung services to patients in Merseyside, North Wales, the Isle of Man and parts of Lancashire and Cheshire. In doing so, it not only performs more open-heart surgery operations than any other hospital in the UK, but also make the findings from our research programs available nationwide and throughout the world. 

But as long as heart disease exists, there remains the need to develop new techniques and treatments as well as to improve existing ones that will help get to the causes of heart disease.

Whilst the Centre is dedicated to providing the highest level of patient care, it is equally committed to research and firmly believes that, “Today’s Research is Tomorrow’s Care.” 

Every day at least one of its surgeons will, quite literally, be holding someone’s life in their hands by performing surgery on a patient who is desperately ill. Their skill was learned as a consequence of careful and painstaking medical research performed by their peers of the past and it is vital that this research continues so that new treatments, procedures and cures can be developed. This is the only way forward if the number of deaths that occur every year are to be reduced.

The Centre is currently running more than 40 separate research projects. Its aim is to provide some very clear and tangible benefits for all heart patients, to influence current and future clinical practice and to reduce the loss of lives from heart disease. 

Our history

The Merseybeat Appeal was set up in 1998 with the specific purpose of raising funds to support the research programmes within the Cardiothoracic Centre.

Of all the research that goes on in the hospital, the work supported by the Appeal is the biggest. 

The Appeal has raised in excess of £1 million to:

• develop research in a wide range of heart and chest related conditions and treatments;
• pioneer new techniques;
• develop and improve current techniques;
• provide vital equipment to the CTC’s wards and departments for the direct benefit of patients.