Heart specialists at Southampton General Hospital are the first in Europe to implant an innovative 'slinky' coil to open a patient's blocked artery.

Stents are used to create permanent blood flow in previously blocked arteries of coronary heart disease or heart attack patients during angioplasty, a procedure in which cardiologists inflate an artery with a small balloon, clear it and insert a permanent coil.

The new advanced design, known as the Resolute Integrity Stent System, is more flexible than other types and can be used to reach narrow or difficult blood vessels - its bendy design also means it has an improved ability to mould to the shape of an individual's artery rather than remain rigid.

Consultant cardiologist Dr Iain Simpson, who performed the first procedure using the coil, said: "The new stent is more flexible for getting around twisty arteries, giving us another option when treating patients with coronary heart disease or those who have suffered a heart attack."

Immediate angioplasty with a stent, known as primary percutaneous coronary intervention (primary PCI), is now recognised as the best treatment for heart attack patients - and Southampton's cardiac centre is the major centre in the Wessex region to offer the treatment round-the-clock.

The team also has a rescue service for surrounding hospitals in the south who don't provide angioplasty 24/7.

Before the development of primary PCI, patients were treated with clot-busting drugs, effective only in around 70% of cases and resulting in a longer hospital stay.

Notes

1) The Resolute Integrity Stent System is manufactured by Medtronic.

2) Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the largest acute trusts in England and operates at three sites across the city of Southampton. It provides local hospital services to half a million people living in Southampton and SW Hampshire and specialist services including neurosciences, cardiac care and specialist children's services to more than three million people in central southern England and the Channel Islands.

2) Every year more than 8,000 staff at the trust see 450,000 people at outpatient appointments, deal with 95,000 attendances at the Emergency Department and treat 115,000 inpatients and day patients. Providing these services costs £1.3 million per day.

3) Independent watchdogs from the Care Quality Commission rated Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust as "fair" for quality of services and "good" for quality of financial management in the 2008/09 annual health check.

4) Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust has over 20,000 members - ranging from patients, local residents and staff - who have registered an interest in the development and progress of their hospitals.

5) Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust now has a Twitter page. Twitter is a form of microblogging which enables you to keep up-to-date with the people or organisations in which you are interested in headlines of 140 characters or fewer.

6) As well as fundraising for ward and department charity projects across SUHT, a major fundraising Red & White Appeal has been launched by Southampton Hospital Charity to raise £2.2 million to create the transplant treatment centre of choice for patients with leukaemia and other blood disorders from Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Wiltshire, Dorset, West Sussex and the Channel Islands.

Source:
Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust