The new St Vincent’s Private Hospital Werribee will include the first cardiac and vascular catheter laboratory in Wyndham.
The $95 million hospital, under construction in Hoppers Lane, will open its doors to patients on January 30 next year.
Among the hospital’s features will be a catheter laboratory where cardiac and vascular interventional procedures will be performed.
The laboratory will include state-of-the-art equipment such as “intelligent control” software that minimises X-ray exposure for patients.
The ward will have cardiac-monitored rooms, allowing a patient’s heartbeat and rhythm to be monitored remotely.
Specialist doctors who will operate in the catheter laboratory will include cardiologists, vascular surgeons and interventional radiologists.
The director of cardiology at St Vincent’s Private Hospital Melbourne and Werribee, cardiologist Robert Whitbourn, said procedures such as angiograms, angioplasty and pacemaker insertion would be performed in the laboratory.
Professor Whitbourn, who founded Werribee Heart five years ago, said patients needing those procedures usually had to travel to Melbourne.
“Up to this time, if someone had to have an angiogram, or stent [mesh tube] put in, we’ve had to take them into St Vincents in the city,” he said. “This [the St Vincents’ cardiac catheter laboratory] will allow us to look after patients locally, without them having to go all the way to the city. It’s a huge thing for patients, it really is.”
Professor Whitbourn said that with Wyndham’s fast-growing population came a requirement for essential medical services.
“I went into this area because it’s challenging,” he said.
“What we do saves lives.”
