Preventing and curing heart rhythm disorders

30% of cardiovascular diseases are caused by a heart rhythm disorder

With strokes, sudden death, heart failure, paralysis, dementia and cognitive disorders, heart rhythm diseases affect millions of people around the world, chronically, acutely, or even fatally.

Every year, heart rhythm disorders cause:

20% of strokes worldwide
350,000 sudden deaths in Europe or the United States
150,000 hospitalizations for heart failure in France

Their prevalence is increasing sharply with the ageing of the population.

In 2010, the “National Investment Programme”, supporting innovation and scientific excellence in France, was a unique opportunity to create the Liryc University Hospital Institute, entirely dedicated to rhythmology and the management of these diseases.

The Liryc University Hospital Institute teams focus their efforts on the three main heart rhythm disorders: atrial fibrillation, ventricular fibrillation and heart failure, which have in common a breakdown in harmony between the electrical and mechanical functioning of the heart.Faced with the suffering of patients and their loved ones, with the major financial impact for our health system, Liryc’s vocation is to prevent and cure heart rhythm disorders.

Four missions to enable major medical advances

Bringing together national and international expertise from many disciplines within a single institute, Liryc is committed to four missions to bring major medical advances to life and to provide better care for patients with heart rhythm disorders:

Research, to better understand the electrical functioning of the heart and to explore the mechanisms behind heart rhythm disorders.
Innovation, to develop and invent the therapies of tomorrow.
Patient care, to improve patient support and to save lives.
Training, to widely communicate the advances of research and clinical teams and to train professionals on an international scale.

Research: understanding better

For over two decades, doctors and researchers at Liryc have been working to understand the mechanisms of arrhythmias and the causes of cardiac mortality, a hitherto largely under-explored field of cardiology, with regard not only to their incidence but also to their socio-economic impact on health systems. Their effort took on a whole new dimension with the creation of the Liryc University Hospital Institute in 2012.

Liryc researchers and doctors are responsible for major scientific advances in the fields of atrial/ventricular fibrillation and cardiac resynchronization that have led to new therapeutic strategies being implemented throughout the world.

The strength of Liryc’s research programme lies on the one hand in the fact that the lines of research emerge directly from the clinical needs observed in patients, and on the other hand, on choosing an approach that is completely focused on heart rhythm disorders. The programme draws the best from cutting-edge research platforms and ambitious international collaborations.

Innovation: inventing and transforming

Thanks to its multidisciplinary expertise and unique technological platforms, Liryc invents diagnostic tools, medical devices and therapies of tomorrow.

Liryc aims to transform the knowledge acquired in understanding arrhythmias and cardiac desynchronization into innovations made available to clinicians to improve care.Liryc files patents in partnership with local, national and international players and also contributes to the launch of startups in the field of innovative care.

Patient care: preventing and treating

The expertise of the medical and paramedical teams is exercised within a perfectly integrated organization on the site of the Haut-Lévêque Cardiological Hospital of Bordeaux University Hospital Centre. This brings together the skills of all specialities related to cardiac disease.

Patient care at the Haut-Lévêque Cardiological Hospital involves the highest number of interventions on cardiac electrical tissue (>~1500 ablations/year) and implantations of pacemakers and defibrillators (>~800/year) in France. All this is done in conjunction with basic and clinical research, with a view to conducting constant medical innovation for the benefit of patients.

Training: transmitting and teaching

Liryc also has the mission of transmitting the knowledge acquired through the institute’s research work to enable optimal patient care in the greatest number of healthcare centres around the world.

To do this, throughout the year, the institute’s teams provide Liryc with training for doctors, students, engineers and researchers in the fields of cardiac electrophysiology in research and healthcare settings, also relying on innovative simulation and digital tools to meet increasing local, national and international training needs.