Cardiology

The Department of Cardiology of Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, was founded in 1959; its Cardiac Function Laboratory was established in 1985, and its Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory in 1988. After several decades of development, the department now has 301 open beds, more than 230,000 outpatient visits annually, and over 34,000 interventional procedures each year. It is a key discipline of the Ministry of Education and a national clinical key specialty designated by the National Health Commission, and houses national-level platforms including the National Health Commission training bases for interventional diagnosis and treatment of coronary heart disease, arrhythmias, and structural heart disease, as well as the national standardized residency training base, including the cardiology specialist training base. Relying on the Hubei Provincial Key Laboratory of Genetic and Molecular Mechanisms of Cardiovascular Disease and the Hubei Provincial Engineering Research Center for Vascular Interventional Therapy, the department provides strong support for the coordinated development of medical care, education, and research. Under the leadership of successive department directors, including Professors Tao Huanle, Zhao Huayue, Yu Shu, Lu Zaiying, Ma Yexin, Wang Daowen, and Zeng Hesong, the cardiovascular medicine team has continued to grow. The current academic leader is Professor Wang Yan, who holds important academic positions at home and abroad, including member of the Professional Committee of the Arrhythmia Association of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association, member of the Arrhythmia Branch of the Chinese Society of Biomedical Engineering, executive member of the Youth Committee of the Chinese Society of Electrophysiology and Pacing of the Chinese Medical Association, and chair of the Hubei Society of Electrophysiology and Pacing. The Department of Cardiology has a strong faculty, with 95 physicians, including 23 senior professors and 35 associate senior physicians, 10 doctoral supervisors, and 12 master's supervisors. It has more than 10 national-, provincial-, and municipal-level high-caliber professionals, including principal investigators of the National Key Research and Development Program, National Young A awardees (formerly the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars), National Young B awardees (formerly the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars), overseas outstanding young scholars, first-tier members of the Hubei Medical Leading Talent Program, first-tier medical and health professionals under Hubei's Chutian Talent Program, Hubei Hundred Talents Program recipients, Hubei outstanding young medical professionals, Wuhan young and middle-aged medical backbone professionals, and outstanding young professionals under the Wuhan Talent Program. The specialty covers the diagnosis and treatment of all types of cardiovascular disease and is at the national and even international forefront particularly in the diagnosis and treatment of fulminant myocarditis; complex coronary artery disease and great-vessel intervention; structural heart disease intervention; zero-fluoroscopy electrophysiology; pulsed-field ablation for atrial fibrillation; transcatheter ablation for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy; and artificial intelligence and disease-risk prediction. Its research strength is outstanding: it has undertaken more than 100 national-level projects, with funding exceeding RMB 100 million. It has published more than 1,000 SCI papers, many in leading international journals including The Lancet Digital Health, Circulation, Circulation Research, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, European Heart Journal, and Cell Metabolism; it holds 40 national invention patents, including international patents, has translated multiple achievements into applications, and has received 11 provincial- and ministerial-level awards. In the 2023 Fudan ranking of specialty reputation and the China Hospital Science and Technology Evaluation ranking for cardiology, it ranked 15th nationwide in both. The department has led the development of 8 clinical practice guidelines/expert consensuses and participated in 10 national consensuses, strongly advancing the standardization of cardiovascular disease diagnosis and treatment in China. Particularly in the field of fulminant myocarditis, as a core institution it led the publication in 2017 of the Chinese Expert Consensus on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Adult Fulminant Myocarditis, which was further upgraded in 2025 into the globally released Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Adult Fulminant Myocarditis in China (Chinese and English editions), establishing for the first time a standardized diagnostic and treatment framework for this critical illness. Experts from the department have served as chief editors or chief translators of more than 20 monographs and national planned textbooks, including Internal Medicine, the standardized undergraduate textbook for national higher medical schools; Diagnosis and Treatment of Fulminant Myocarditis, the world's first systematic monograph; Cardiac Electrophysiology Without Fluoroscopy, the world's first monograph; and Diagnosis and Precision Treatment of Aortic Diseases. These works have built a systematic theoretical framework for cardiovascular diseases and provided comprehensive, high-level learning resources for training professionals at different levels. Upholding the spirit of “Investigate the nature of things and exhaust the principles; work together in the same boat,” the department is committed to promoting collaborative innovation in medical care, education, and research, and to contributing the strength of Tongji Cardiology to the hospital's high-quality development and the realization of the Healthy China 2030 strategic goals.