Mollyn Nakabea 
[Photo: FILE]
Sai Prema’s Sanjeevani Heart Hospital will begin offering cardiovascular procedures to adult patients this month, expanding its services beyond children.
Director Dr Kruppali Tappoo says the hospital initially focused on providing free heart surgeries for children.
However, it is now expanding care to adults following the installation of Fiji and the South Pacific’s first biplane catheterisation laboratory in April.
“We have invested in this 3 million dollar machine which costs a lot of money and of course we want to help our children but we also need to help the adults and seeing the survey and you know all the results with our adults who are losing their battle to life because many of them have cardiovascular disease they have heart attacks so this month we will start helping some of the adult patients”
Dr Tappoo says the catheterisation laboratory allows specialists to perform certain heart procedures using a catheter, potentially reducing the need for open-heart surgery in some patients.
“In April this year we put our cath lab in and it’s Fiji and South Pacific’s first biplane cath lab which means it has it’s a little different to your standard cath lab it has these two C arms so if you’re you know trying to close a hole so what we can do with this machine is some children will not even need open heart surgery they’re not going to have a big scar on their chest”
She is also urging Fijians to take greater responsibility for their heart health, saying healthy lifestyle advice needs to be turned into action.
