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The Uganda Heart Institute unveiled a catheterization laboratory (CathLab), a specialised heart theatre in which minimally invasive procedures are performed to diagnose and treat conditions of the heart and blood vessels yesterday 17^th December 2024.

The Uganda Heart Institute introduced a catheterization laboratory (CathLab), a specialized heart theater where minimally invasive procedures are conducted to diagnose and treat heart and blood vessel conditions yesterday 17th December 2024.

Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, the Minister of Health, commissioned the Shs7 billion state-of-the-art new CathLab which was funded by the government. She applauded the management of the facility for their dedication and insistence to advance heart care.

“It is the most advanced of its kind in Africa and it will empower the Uganda Heart Institute (UHI) to handle over 10,000 complex heart procedures during its lifespan. It gives me comfort to know that the majority of our heart patients will be managed at home. The UHI has long been a cornerstone of hope for individuals and families affected by cardiovascular diseases,” she said.

Dr Aceng also said that facilities such as this would enable the institute to diagnose and treat heart conditions “more efficiently, reducing mortality rates, alleviating suffering and easing the financial burden on families.”

“Currently, the UHI can comprehensively diagnose and provide care for 95 percent of adult heart cases and 85 percent of pediatric cases meaning you have remarkably reduced haemorrhage of resources abroad,” she said.

The executive director of UHI, Dr John Omagino explained that the new lab comes with more artificial intelligence and other functions like the CT component thus providing better resolutions for them to improve diagnosis and care.

“The CT is the computerised tomography, whereby they usually roll people in and take many x-rays, then combine and reconstitute the picture, but all that now has been brought into the CathLab. So, it is a combined equipment,” Dr Omagino said.

He also revealed that they are planning to establish heart centers in different regions to address access to care. He said they will have these facilities and that this will be done in phases.

He explained that with the new CathLab, the doctors work on one’s heart problem with a beating heart and without cutting any body part unlike the old method of operation where they would first open the chest and stop the heart as they do the surgery.

“The other advantage is that when we do closed procedures as in the CathLab is that within only two days you are being assessed for discharge unlike the old method of open-heart operation that will take one at least 10 days within the hospital,” he added.

He also said that closed heart surgery addresses the problem of scars. “When we do closed surgery, you don’t get a scar on your chest while when we do open surgery, we actually split your chest open and still leave a scar however neat we are,” Dr Omagino said.