Cardiology Team (Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory)
Queen Mary Hospital

Round-the-clock invincible heart protectors

Doctors are conducting a PPCI procedure.

Sacrificing one’s personal time is a prerequisite of becoming a member of Queen Mary Hospital Cardiology Team’s Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory (CCL), the first public hospital that introduced 24-hour primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCCI) in 2010. Knowing the needs of patients who suffered acute heart attack, team members worked around the clock without additional resources.

Team leader and Ward Manager Luk Wai-sum, who is also one of the founders of the service, says the team was put together after they learned from international journals and researches that PCCI was often more effective than thrombolytic therapy for patients with acute myocardial infarction. Thus, they decided to provide 24-hour PPCI with just two doctors, five nurses, and one radiographer at the very beginning.

As the procedure takes place, colleagues stand by to monitor the patient, watching closely for changes in vital signs and the electrocardiogram readings.

Associate Consultant Dr Tam Chor-cheung, an early member of the team, recalls, “It’s very important to stay healthy to do this job. On top of our normal duties, we have to sacrifice our personal time to be on call. In the early days, each of us had to be on call every other day. Also, some people joked that we made too much trouble for ourselves and we had to be well-prepared psychologically for such ridicules. Frankly, we did once thought of giving it up. Yet we changed our mind when we saw patients recovering and our teammates doing all they can to care for patients. All those make our efforts pay off.”

Nurses are disinfecting a patient’s skin and preparing equipment before the procedure.

The team turns pressure into motivation. Timely treatment has lowered the mortality rate. Many lives today are indebted to the work of the team which handled more than 800 PPCI procedures between 2011 and 2017 – including a colleague who was in cardiac arrest for more than half an hour after a heart attack. With timely rescue, the colleague survived miraculously with full recovery and was back at work later.

New technology and procedures are constantly introduced by the team to improve care for patients with heart disease. Other than structural heart disease treatment and minimally invasive ventricular assists, the team also reviews workflow and pilots schemes for emergency cases. As ageing population continues, the number as well as the complexity of cases handled by the CCL team are expected to grow. But with team spirit and powerful motivation, there is every reason to believe the team will continue to rise to every new challenge.