The Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology ( ur, , or AFIC) also known as the National Institute of Heart Diseases or NIHD is a

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...

and

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

cardiac The heart is a muscular organ in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as carbon dioxide to t ...

hospital A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emerge ...

located in

Rawalpindi Cantonment Rawalpindi Cantonment is a large cantonment located in Rawalpindi, Punjab province, Pakistan. The headquarters of the Pakistan Army which are known as the General Headquarters (GHQ) are located in the Rawalpindi cantonment. Rawalpindi cantonm ...

Punjab, Pakistan Punjab (; , ) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in central-eastern region of the country, Punjab is the second-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the largest province by population. It shares land borders with the ...

. This 800-bed cardiac health care institute is a major institute and hospital in Pakistan. The hospital delivers heart disease and

health care services The healthcare industry (also called the medical industry or health economy) is an aggregation and integration of sectors within the economic system that provides goods and services to treat patients with curative, preventive, rehabilitative, ...

to people of

Pakistan Armed Forces The Pakistan Armed Forces (; ) are the military forces of Pakistan. It is the world's sixth-largest military measured by active military personnel and consist of three formally uniformed services—the Army, Navy, and the Air Force, which are ...

and fellow citizens of Pakistan.

History

According to history pages, this institute started operating in 1970. The

Pakistan Army The Pakistan Army (, ) is the Army, land service branch of the Pakistan Armed Forces. The roots of its modern existence trace back to the British Indian Army that ceased to exist following the partition of India, Partition of British India, wh ...

Cardiac Service started in 1953 in Cardiothoracic Centre Rawalpindi. The first angiography was done in 1969 and the first

open heart surgery Cardiac surgery, or cardiovascular surgery, is surgery on the heart or great vessels performed by cardiac surgeons. It is often used to treat complications of ischemic heart disease (for example, with coronary artery bypass grafting); to corr ...

was done in 1970. In 1978, the Cardiothoracic Centre Rawalpindi was upgraded as Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology. 3 years after in 1981, the hospital extended their services to all Pakistani Citizens and upgraded to National Institute of Heart Diseases under the President of Pakistan's directions. Before

Malala Yousafzai Malala Yousafzai ( ur, , , pronunciation: ; born 12 July 1997), is a Pakistani female education activist and the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Awarded when she was 17, she is the world's youngest Nobel Prize laureate, and the second Pak ...

was airlifted to

Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham is a major, 1,215 bed, tertiary NHS and military hospital in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham, situated very close to the University of Birmingham. The hospital, which cost £545 million to construct ...

in England for international treatment, she had been cared for by Pakistani and visiting British doctors at the Institute. She had been flown there from the Combined Military Hospital

Peshawar Peshawar (; ps, پېښور ; hnd, ; ; ur, ) is the sixth most populous city in Pakistan, with a population of over 2.3 million. It is situated in the north-west of the country, close to the International border with Afghanistan. It is ...

, where she had been taken from the District Hospital in Swat.

Departments and Units

The hospital is divided into the following departments and units.

Units

Coronary Care Unit A coronary care unit (CCU) or cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) is a hospital ward specialized in the care of patients with heart attacks, unstable angina, cardiac dysrhythmia and (in practice) various other cardiac conditions that require contin ...

, 19 beds * Surgical ITC, 19 beds

Departments

* Department of

Echocardiography An echocardiography, echocardiogram, cardiac echo or simply an echo, is an ultrasound of the heart. It is a type of medical imaging of the heart, using standard ultrasound or Doppler ultrasound. Echocardiography has become routinely used in t ...

* Department of Exercise Tolerance Test * Department of

Nuclear Cardiology Nuclear medicine or nucleology is a medical specialty involving the application of radioactive substances in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Nuclear imaging, in a sense, is "radiology done inside out" because it records radiation emitting ...

* Departments of

Cardiac Electrophysiology Cardiac electrophysiology is a branch of cardiology and basic science focusing on the electrical activities of the heart. The term is usually used in clinical context, to describe studies of such phenomena by invasive (intracardiac) catheter recor ...

References

{{coord missing, Punjab, Pakistan Hospitals in Rawalpindi Military medical facilities in Pakistan