Four new operating rooms built solely for cardiac surgery have been unveiled at St. Elizabeth Healthcare’s Edgewood, Kentucky campus, giving the hospital system what it describes as the first site of its kind in the state. The rooms are designed to speed up complex heart procedures amid rising demand for cardiac care.
The new site is built around procedures for moments when seconds count, according to the hospital. According to WKRC, Dr. Schuler said the equipment inside the four dedicated rooms is necessary for the complexity of modern cardiac surgery, with monitors, tools and workspaces arranged so surgeons, nurses and staff can move efficiently during operations. The rooms support endoscopic surgery, robotic surgery and other advanced procedures, and patients are moved directly across the hall to the cardiovascular ICU once surgery is complete.
The expansion lands atop an already accomplished cardiac program. St. Elizabeth performs roughly 550 cardiac surgeries a year, all of them at the Edgewood campus, within the 67,000-square-foot Florence Wormald Heart & Vascular Institute, according to HeartValveSurgery.com. That building was funded in part by a $7 million gift from local businessman William J. Yung III, in honor of his mother; LINK nky described it as the largest donation in St. Elizabeth Healthcare’s history.
A Program Already Ranked Among the Nation’s Best
St. Elizabeth Healthcare publishes outcomes information on its website. St. Elizabeth Edgewood holds a three-star rating — the highest tier awarded by the Society of Thoracic Surgeons — for both coronary artery bypass grafting and mitral valve surgery, a distinction earned by fewer than 10% of cardiothoracic programs nationwide…