Work to start on hospital's new cath lab.

Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

SPRINGFIELD - Construction of a $2.2 million cardiac catheterization laboratory will begin next week at McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center, the hospital's first step toward providing open heart surgeries.

Hospital officials hope to complete the 1,070-square-foot project by December and begin seeing patients by the end of the year, Rick Varnum, associate administrator, said Friday.

In a cath lab, cardiologists thread a long, skinny tube - a catheter - into a vessel in the arm or leg, and slide it into the heart or the coronary arteries. The catheter is used to run diagnostic tests, such as measuring blood pressure, oxygen and the heart's pumping ability, and to look for blockages and plaque buildup.

Catheters also can be used to treat heart disease by inserting stents or balloons into clogged arteries, procedures known as interventions.

McKenzie-Willamette, now part of Triad Hospitals Inc., the nation's third-largest profit hospital system, decided to build the cath lab because "people are living longer and because we're an aging population," said Kathy Deacon, chief operating officer.

By having its own cath lab, McKenzie-Willamette won't have to transfer as many patients to Sacred Heart Medical Center, Deacon said. And both Sacred Heart and the other cath lab in town, Oregon Cardiology Diagnostic Center, are "very busy," she said, an assessment confirmed Friday by representatives of Sacred Heart and Oregon Cardiology.

High-tech equipment, such as state-of-the-art digital imaging monitors, accounts for about 90 percent of the cost of the project, Varnum said.

The McKenzie-Willamette cath lab will do only diagnostic procedures at first; heart experts recommend hospitals not do cardiac catheter interventions unless they also are able to do open heart surgeries.

Sometime next year, McKenzie-Willamette officials will consider establishing an open-heart surgery program at the existing hospital building, Deacon said. Triad plans to build a new hospital in Eugene, but it will be at least three years before the new facility opens, Deacon said.

Heart disease is the No. 1 killer in the United States, accounting for 950,000 deaths each year and for 40 percent of all deaths. About 61 million Americans - almost one-fourth of the population - have some form of cardiovascular disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On Thursday, McKenzie-Willamette officials invited Bring Recycling out to salvage an old file room that will converted into the cath lab. Once that work is done, the general contractor, Lee Construction Co. of Eugene, will get to work on the project.

The number of cardiac cath labs have increased in recent years nationwide, fueled by new techniques and devices that allow for less invasive treatment of heart disease - and by the desire of hospitals and doctors to capture market share in a profitable area of medicine.

On Friday, former President Bill Clinton underwent one such test, called an angiogram, that revealed "significant blockage," a Democratic official told the Associated Press on Friday, and Clinton was expected to undergo bypass surgery as early as today.