A HOSPITAL trust has thanked a rotary club for raising money to purchase a new cardiac ablation machine worth £60,000.

The Basingstoke Deane Rotary Club raised £30,000 through various fundraising activities to pay for the specialist equipment, with the remaining funds coming from Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Alex Whitfield, chief executive of the trust, said: “We are so grateful to the Basingstoke Deane Rotary Club for their generosity and support getting this new technology into our hospitals.

“It is a great addition to the care we are able to provide and is a great example of our commitment to innovation for the benefit of our population.

“We are looking ahead to the autumn when we open our new Cath labs to enable us to continue providing outstanding cardias care for our patients.”

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The new cardiac ablation equipment will support doctors in finding and fixing irregular heartbeats.

While the ablation procedure is well established in the United Kingdom, up until now it was only available to patients in Hampshire by travelling to Southampton.

The first cardiac ablation at HHFT took place at Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital last month and was performed by Dr Rob Bowers and his team.

Dr Bowers said: “The procedure involves us working out exactly what mechanism a patient’s abnormal rhythm is caused by and then taking a wire from the vein at the top of the leg and using to give either heat or cooling energy to get rid of the abnormal rhythm.

“We have lots of patients who travel for this procedure at the moment and what we want to do is take the patients who we can help safely in Basingstoke and offer them the treatment closer to home.

“This means the equipment in Southampton is freed up, so instead of having one piece of kit to help all of the patients in Hampshire, we have two.”

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“Once the new cardiac labs are built the service will grow even further.

“We are all really excited about what's to come and the high-quality care we can give to our patients.”

Rotary club president David Knights said: “We are all really pleased to have been able to make a big difference by raising this money for such a good cause – with each pound making a big difference.”

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