A THREAT to the North-East's heart and lung transplant unit has been lifted.

The transplant centre at Newcastle's Freeman Hospital will stay open, but remains under constant scrutiny.

The future of six centres, including Newcastle, had been under discussion following proposals from The Royal College of Surgeons and senior NHS clinicians to reduce the number of units to four. The move follows Department of Health plans to offer ten per cent more patients the life-saving operations by 2005.

Transplants at a seventh centre, St George's Healthcare Trust, in London, remain suspended following a report by the Government's health watchdog, which found patients may have died needlessly under ineffective surgeons.

Health Minister John Hutton said the centres would be subject to stringent inspections by the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI).

He said: "The Government explored in detail the proposal to reduce the number of units to four.

''There is no firm evidence that reducing the number of centres would lead to better outcomes. I can announce that all six cardiothoracic transplant units will continue to serve NHS patients.

''To do so, the units will need to meet the clear and explicit requirements set out in the new monitoring framework proposed. This will include periodic and rigorous inspections by CHI, which means that the entire national service will be under constant scrutiny."

The standards are to cover staffing levels and qualifications, arrangements for retrieval of organs, the number of transplants carried out and survival and rejection rates.

Due to the success of road safety campaigns and improvements in intensive care, fewer people who might be heart or lung donors are dying in hospitals. As a result, adult heart and lung transplants have fallen by about 30 per cent in the past five years to 347 in 1999.