Following years of anticipation the first medical procedure was carried out at the new Mater Dei hospital yesterday morning, as the full migration process from St Luke’s hospital got underway in earnest.

The St Luke’s out-patients department yesterday began its one week migration process, while in-patient services, including hospital wards, will start migrating to the new hospital on Monday. The out-patient pharmacy is also being moved this week, while a one week halt in non-emergency surgery has also begun.

Yesterday’s inaugural procedure, a coronary angiogram – an x-ray procedure that shows blockages in the heart and arteries – was performed by cardiologist Prof. Albert Fenech at Mater Dei’s state of the art Catheterisation Suite.

The 15-minute procedure, of which a total of four were performed yesterday, on two men and two women, allows physicians to view clogged arteries and is performed by means of a catheter being inserted into a main artery in the upper leg, which is then passed up to the heart.

The angiography machine in use at Mater Dei, carrying a EUR2.5 million (Lm1.03 million) price tag, is the single most expensive piece of equipment at the new hospital. As opposed to earlier versions used in Malta, the new equipment provides full 3D images, which are followed on monitors as the catheter makes its way to the heart.

Journalists were yesterday allowed to follow the first procedure from the Catheterisation Suite’s control room, located between two hi-tech catheterisation laboratories. The fact that the new hospital will hold two such laboratories, as opposed to the single lab at St Luke’s, is expected to significantly decrease waiting lists for a number of important procedures.

In all, Prof. Fenech said yesterday, some 2,200 angiograms and 600 angioplasties are performed annually while a further 300 pacemakers are implanted each year.

Remarking how the additional catheterisation laboratory installed at Mater Dei is expected to cut waiting lists for a number of procedures, Prof. Fenech added that the compact surroundings would also facilitate the delivery of curative action.

Instead of different elements involved in the process being placed hotchpotch around the hospital, as was previously the case, the ward, catheterisation labs, operating theatres and the Intensive Therapy Unit are all within close proximity of each other.

The state of the art equipment, “fabulous staff” and the superb new environment, Prof. Fenech added, would also go a long way toward the goal.