DESPITE continuing uncertainty about the future of heart services in England, the world-famous Freeman Hospital in Newcastle has revealed plans to build a new £30m Children’s Heart Unit.
Bosses at the Newcastle Hospitals Trust, which runs the Freeman Hospital’s existing Cardiothoracic Centre, are preparing to submit a planning application for a new unit on an adjoining piece of spare land
The bold move suggests that managers at the trust are in no doubt that the Freeman Hospital will remain an important national centre for children’s heart surgery, even though the Government recently confirmed that the long-running review into the location of all heart services in England will resume in the autumn.
A spokesman for the Newcastle Trust said: “The Freeman Hospital’s Cardiothoracic Centre is a regional and national centre of excellence for respiratory and cardiac care, providing specialist treatment for all types of heart and respiratory related conditions in adults and children.
"The Newcastle Hospitals Trust is the only trust in the UK to provide all cardiac care from conception, through birth, childhood and onto adulthood.
“The Children’s Heart Unit undertakes complex congenital heart surgery that cannot be performed in any other centre. The unit treats children who are in the most at-risk group and accepts referrals for this type of surgery from every UK and Republic of Ireland children’s heart unit.”
Trust officials said the the demand for cardiothoracic expertise at the Freeman Hospital has grown substantially since it opened in 1977 while treatment has got more complex.
These factors have fuelled the need for specialist new facilities for children.
The spokesman added: “These new facilities will allow the hospital to continue to provide these high quality services to the children of the North-East and beyond.”
The three storey new centre will cover an area of about 6,400 square metres and include a 20 bed paediatric intensive care unit, an 18 bed inpatient ward and a cardiothoracic operating theatre and catheter laboratory suite.
A national review of children’s heart services collapsed last summer after a legal challenge from Leeds General Infirmary, which was facing the closure of its specialist children’s heart unit.
The new national review of heart services has been extended to include the treatment of adults and is expected to get underway in September.
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