It is indeed a great day for us as we officially present this Phillips Allura XPER FD 10/10 Larc digital fluoroscopy unit. This magnificent machine is used for a variety of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures on cardiac patients.
It comes as a great relief as prior to this, we only had one for the public health system and it is located at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital and offers a 24 hour emergency service.
The one we are unveiling today cost R12 862 328 plus R3 318 454 for maintenance. It will offer services from Monday to Friday i.e. one operating slate/list per week of 5 patients electively and emergency; in total it will attend to 15 specialised procedures per week.
We are comfortable with its performance so far since we started operating it in May 2013 using a competent staff that consist of the Head of Clinical Unit specialist; 1 specialist; 3 trainee Cardiologists; 3 medical officers; 1 registrar as well as 3 Cath lab Nurses carrying out the following procedures:
- Coronary angiography which entails mapping the heart and blood vessels supplying the heart for abnormalities, narrowing, etc.
- Coronary interventional procedures where the cardiologist is able to perform procedures on the heart’s blood vessels without having to perform open surgery.
- Doing insertions of permanent and temporary pacemakers; screening of mechanical heart valves and leads;
- Doing insertion of balloon pumps into the heart’s blood vessels to improve blood flow and
- Doing diagnosis and repair of abnormalities in blood vessels through minimally invasive surgery.
We are confident now that our province will benefit a lot as the availability of this CATH Machine means that more angiograms, stents and pacemakers will be done.
I may as well indicate that both machines inclusively, in the period between 1 January 2013 and 28 October 2013 [yesterday], have been responsible for the total number of 1203 clinical cases for patients requiring diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. We still have a waiting list for the elective procedures that goes up to January 2014 – about 60 patients per month.
It is now really worrying that cardiovascular disease attack even teenagers and young adults.
We thus call upon everyone in our society to work hard to eliminate the following:
- rheumatic fever related to poverty
- diabetes
- hypertension
- smoking
- high cholesterol, and
- bad lifestyle (little exercise and too much fatty food).
Even though we regard the procurement and availability of this machine as a huge milestone for uninsured Cardiac patients in KwaZulu-Natal; we still need to work harder to improve our health status.
I thank you.
