Patients in southern and central Italy who need complicated heart surgery no longer need to travel for the best care.
The Istituto Mediterraneo per i Trapianti e Terapie ad Alta Specializzazione (ISMETT) recently opened a new, state-of-the-art hybrid operating room in Sicily — the first south of Rome — which is being used to perform complex cardiovascular procedures on patients.
“The quality of a health system is measured by its ability to accommodate people in technologically advanced facilities,” said Angelo Luca, M.D., chief executive officer of Palermo-based ISMETT. “Meeting this challenge means allowing professionals to operate with state-of-the-art tools and equipment to guarantee that the patient is at the center of care.”
A hybrid operating room houses high-quality imaging equipment and technology, and allows doctors to conduct both interventional and surgical procedures in the same space. It also allows a multidisciplinary team to operate on at-risk patients through the use of interventional techniques that don’t require the opening of the chest, such as an artificial valve implant where the native one is diseased.
The new facility is equipped with all the equipment required to guide clinicians during the procedure, as well as monitoring equipment and devices such as a heart-lung machine, automatic ventilator and ventricular assist devices to cope with any kind of emergency.
The hybrid operating room — modeled after those used at UPMC in the U.S. — will also allow surgeons to perform minimally invasive procedures and cardiac surgery hybrid interventions on coronary arteries and cardiac valves; vascular endoprosthesis surgery on the aorta and large vessels; complex angio-radiology intervention on patients with congenital cardiac diseases; and arrhythmia treatment with electrophysiology studies and ablation.
ISMETT, a leading Italian transplant hospital managed by UPMC, was recently ranked among the top hospitals in the country based on 30-day mortality rates following cardiac, thoracic and abdominal surgeries.
