The department has 350 beds in single, twin-bedded, and three-bedded rooms. There are four wards  three of which are located in Radon (wards A, B, C), and one in Terme(ward D). The A, B, and C wards are for specialized cardiac rehabilitation.

•  Ward A – Specialized Cardiac Rehabilitation –  Assoc Prof. Dragan Đorđević, M.D., PhD, head physician
• Ward B – Specialized Cardiac Rehabilitation – medical director: Ivana Nikolić-Pavlović, M. D., MSc, primarius, head physician
• Ward C – Specialized Cardiac Rehabilitation – medical director: Prof. Ivan Tasić, M.D., PhD, head physician
• Ward D – Specialized Cardiac Rehabilitation – medical director: Dejan Petrović, M.D., PhD, head physician

On these wards cardiac rehabilitation is carried out according to the indications defined by National Health Insurance Fund. Patients who had a heart attack, a bypass surgery, heart surgery, heart valve replacement or suffer from heart failure come to the department for rehabilitation.

An appointed doctor and a nurse make patient rounds once per day, while the head physician  makes patient rounds once per week.

The care of the patients is in the hands of an experienced team including professors from the Medical Faculty, internal medicine specialists (cardiology), nurses, technicians, physiotherapists, physical medicine and rehabilitation specialists, neurologists, logopedist, etc.

Cardiac rehabilitation includes a set of measures and procedures whose goal is to improve the patient’s physical, mental and social condition having survived acute episodes of heart diseases. Beside the treatment patients are taught how to keep or retake their place in the community and to continue with a normal, active lives usually through personal perseverance. Continuous and controlled physical training is the foundation of cardiac rehabilitation.

The goals of cardiac rehabilitation are:

• Physical – learning one’s physical limitations, living with disability, optimizing effort tolerance and assessing the cause of the limitation of effort tolerance
• Psychological – conquering the fear of physical stress, regaining emotional stability, and  constructive life with a heart disease
• Social – maintaining independent lifestyle, returning to work and daily commitments, returning to family and social roles

Basic rehabilitation methods:

• Daily exercises on an ergo cycle and in groups in a gym (or a pool) under a physiotherapists’ supervision, psychological support (individual or group sessions)
• Education through different lectures on secondary lifetime prevention of cardiovascular diseases, group or individual  walks along marked paths, and diets
• When weather permits outdoor exercise

Besides rehabilitation each patient’s health condition is assessed diagnostically and, if needed, his/hers drug therapy is adjusted.

After an examination and an electrocardiogram additional testing is done: laboratory tests, a stress test, and if needed additional non-standard test are done like an echocardiogram, 24 hour holter monitoring, 24 hour blood pressure monitoring, a neck ultrasound, etc.). Our medical staff is always there if a patient has any dilemma and there are weekly lectures.

Prevention is very important and at Cardiology patients are taught how to change bad life habits and minimize risk factors responsible for heart diseases.

Cardiac rehabilitation is an integral part of modern cardiology and it is designed according to the recommendation of European Society of Cardiology.

In the end the patient gets a discharge list with the records of the complete diagnostics,  recommended  drug therapy and advice for further lifestyle.