Architect Will Assheton outside the new cardiac centre.
	The new cardiac catheterisation laboratory.

A new £4.7 million state-of-the-art Cardiac Centre has been opened at Kettering General Hospital. The new centre has been designed by GSS Architecture, whose founder - John Alfred Gotch - designed the hospital's original buildings in the 19th century.

GSS partner and architect Will Assheton explained, "We were initially appointed by the hospital to undertake a feasibility study, and this was very successful. We were then selected by the main contractors, the Medisinq Simons consortium, to design the new centre. This has now been built over the top of an existing building using an external table top framework. This 'top hat' procedure is a technique that GSS has helped to develop, and means that new buildings can be constructed even where space is extremely limited."

The Cardiac Centre will improve care for adult patients with heart problems and reduce the need for them to travel to a specialist heart centre (such as Glenfield Hospital in Leicester) to receive certain treatments. It will mean that, for the first time, Kettering General Hospital will be able to perform cardiac catheterisation - an investigation which involves pumping a dye into the heart's arteries to identify blocked or narrowed vessels. The centre's services will be phased in over a period of weeks with more complex procedures coming full on line by early next year.

Facilities within the new development will include:

• A fully-equipped Catheterisation Laboratory equipped with state-of-the-art imaging and monitoring equipment
• A cardiac procedures room which will be used for fitting pacemakers
• Pre-assessment/consultation rooms to enable specialist nurses and doctors to see patients privately both before and after their procedure
• An eight-bed recovery/admission area