SERDANG, Oct 17 — The Serdang Hospital Cardiology Centre here, which will start operating on December 12, is expected to speed up the patient treatment process and the waiting period for angiogram treatment, said Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin.

He said the operation of the cardiology centre would shorten the waiting period from 18 months to just nine months for stable elective cases while emergency cases would be treated immediately.

He said the healthcare facility costing RM546 million is equipped with a hybrid operating theatre, which is the first of its kind for facilities under the Ministry of Health (MOH) and will benefit up to 250 cardiac patients per year.

"The Serdang Hospital will become the national tertiary cardiac referral centre for the central region and complex heart cases nationwide, with over 40,000 outpatients and 12,000 invasive treatments, including angiogram and coronary angioplasty per year. With this new building, the Serdang Hospital cardiology service will be able to receive twice the number of patients.

"The operating room facility is also equipped with sophisticated equipment to enable complex cases that require expert surgical and heart specialists to be carried out at the same place,” he said in his speech at the handover of the facility today.

Khary said the eight-storey high one-block cardiology centre is, apart from having 262 beds, also equipped with one unit of the MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) 3.0 Tesla machine specifically for heart diagnostic imaging that can provide images four times clearer than normal MRI.

According to him, an Invasive Cardiac Laboratory (ICL) at the Emergency Department that is on par with the developed countries would allow acute heart attack cases to receive the immediate and best treatment.

He said the opening of the cardiology centre would also increase the number of heart procedures from 35,000 to 60,000 a year, making it the biggest invasive cardiac facility in South-east Asia.

He said the Cardiology Centre will not only be able to treat more heart patients from all over the country, but also become a training facility for many cardiologists. — Bernama