Toowoomba Hospital now performing vital operation

PATIENTS no longer need to travel to Brisbane now the Toowoomba hospital is performing a lifesaving operation.

PATIENTS like Christine Cutts no longer have to travel to Brisbane, now the Toowoomba Hospital is performing lifesaving pacemaker operations.

Ms Cutts was the second patient to receive the pacemaker implantation in the hospital.

"Myself and my family live in Kingaroy, and Brisbane is a long way for us to travel for medical reasons," she said.

"Toowoomba Hospital offering pacemaker implantation is great not only for Toowoomba, but for country people like myself.

"Toowoomba Hospital has been great. The implantation took just over an hour and the staff have been absolutely wonderful and have gone out of their way to help me."

A pacemaker is a small device inserted into the chest to keep the heart beating when it would otherwise stop.

The device uses an electrical pulse to prompt the heart to beat.

Darling Downs Health cardiologist Dr Caleb Mengel said patients who were passing out or collapsing from missing heart beats needed a pacemaker implanted to save their life.

"The cardiac team at Toowoomba Hospital met in February to discuss how we could start to offer pacemaker implantation," Dr Mengel said.

"We worked together to organise the resources and staffing required to offer this to current inpatients and were able to commence pacemaker implantations in late October.

"Pacemaker implantation has great benefits for the patients as we can get them back home and follow them up in their local community.

"Prior to Toowoomba being able to perform pacemaker implantation, patients needed to wait in hospital for transfer to Brisbane and be taken away from their local community.

"We are really excited about being able to offer pacemaker insertion locally and developing and progressing cardiology services at Toowoomba Hospital."