New £3.4m heart labs officially opened

Facilities in the new heart labs will mean fewer patients will have to travel to the North East for treatment

Two new heart laboratories have officially opened at a Cumbrian hospital with health chiefs promising fewer patients will have to travel to another part of the country for treatment.

The £3.4m labs mean dedicated facilities at Carlisle's Cumberland Infirmary have doubled in size with emergencies and planned procedures able to be carried out at the same time.

Dr Justin Barclay, a consultant in interventional cardiology, said some patients had previously had to travel to Newcastle or Middlesbrough in the North East for help.

He said: “We’ll be able to do some of the procedures that take a bit longer or need more equipment that we haven’t been able to do up to now."

Dr Barclay described the new facilities as "a breakthrough in terms of what we have been used to".

He added: "The unit in its prior form opened in 2011 and we had a single catheter laboratory - which is an operating theatre where we do the procedures - so we had to treat everything from life-threatening heart attacks to planned elective procedures in the same facility up to now.

"If we had an emergency, we had to delay elective and non-urgent planned procedures and infrequently we’d have to cancel an appointment and bring the patient back on another occasion.”

The facilities were opened by Sir Liam Donaldson, chair of the integrated care board for the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care System.