Patients are benefitting from more streamlined healthcare and much better health outcomes thanks to a surgery-first in NHS Scotland.
A technique called endoscopic vessel harvesting (EVH) is allowing surgeons to perform less invasive heart procedures, with NHS Golden Jubilee the first in the country to carry out the surgery as a routine practice.
Traditional coronary artery bypass surgery calls for surgeons to take arteries from a patient’s chest and two or more long saphenous veins meaning they have to make a long cut from the top of the leg all the way down to the bottom.
For the new procedure however, clinicians only need to make a few small 2cm incisions which mean patients suffer from reduced pain and less severe scars after surgery.
Less scarring also means patients often don’t have to be followed up with after they’ve been discharged.
Fewer postoperative complications subsequently lead to gains for the wider health system too, with quickened patient flow enabling hospitals to condense waiting times and make more use of capacity.
“New procedures have enabled surgeons to perform more complex surgery on increasingly frail patients who, in the past, may not have been eligible,” said Fraser Sutherland, who is a cardiothoracic consultant at NHS Golden Jubilee.
“We believe EVH surgery will bring many additional benefits to NHS Golden Jubilee and to NHS Scotland over time, including cost savings and improvements in efficiency.”
With NHS Golden Jubilee already responsible for cardiac surgery in the West of Scotland, and in some cases more nationally, local health leaders are hoping to work with the NHS Scotland Academy to train surgeons across the country so they can perform EVH.
NHS Golden Jubilee’s heart, lung and diagnostic division director, Lynne Ayton, explained: “This will help NHS Scotland deliver high quality care through our existing regional and national services and our elective care provision.
“In addition, we will develop our hospital services to meet increasing demand and continually improve how they are delivered for our patients.”
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