HEALTH bosses who are being asked to back a £17.2m expansion scheme at a North-East heart unit have been warned that even more money will be needed to bring down waiting times.

Heart surgeons at South Cleveland Hospital in Middlesbrough want to treat an extra thousand patients a year from June 2002 onwards.

Too many patients are having to wait more than a year for surgery.

The scandal of about 500 heart patients a year dying on the waiting list was exposed by The Northern Echo's A Chance To Live campaign, last year.

It led to Health Secretary Alan Milburn pledging to reduce waiting times from 12 months to six months, and eventually to three months, within a decade.

But even with the extra investment, hospital bosses say they cannot guarantee it will reduce maximum waiting times for heart surgery to six months.

A spokeswoman for the unit said: "To actually get the waits down to six months will involve more substantial investment in the future."

Meanwhile, a more modest expansion scheme at The Freeman Hospital, in Newcastle, has got the go-ahead.

Health authorities and primary care groups have agreed to give the unit an extra £2.2m a year to allow surgeons to perform an extra 200 heart bypasses and an extra 500 angioplasties (using a balloon to unblock arteries) a year.

So far, South Cleveland's expansion plan has been backed by Tees Health Authority.

Next Wednesday, in separate meetings, County Durham and Darlington Health Authority and North Yorkshire Health Authority will be asked to support the plans.

Bosses at South Cleveland have warned health authorities the scheme must be approved by October 31 to fit in with separate Private Finance Initiative expansion plans, which have already been agreed.

To increase the number of heart operations, hospital bosses want to build an extra operating theatre, an extra catheter laboratory, four more dedicated intensive care beds, six high dependency beds and 50 more inpatient or day beds.

Apart from the £17.2m required for the modifications, the new unit would cost an extra £13.5m a year to run.

Eve Knight, liaison officer of the British Cardiac Patients' Association, urged health authorities to back the plans.

"The health authorities can't say no to this. The Government has made it plain that it wants to see a big expansion in heart operations."

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/ news/campaigns/achancetolive