St. Luke’s Health-Memorial Opens 3rd On-Campus Cath Lab

When the Heart and Stroke Center at St. Luke’s Health-Memorial was built in 2009, the goal was to continue growing and building momentum by opening a third cardiac catheterization lab within the facility. In working with Catholic Health Initiatives and recognizing the needs of the community, the Lufkin hospital has seen an increased volume in electrophysiology and cardiac interventional cases over the years making growth a necessity.

On August 16, 2016, that goal became a reality when Memorial opened its third on-campus cath lab with a state-of-the-art bi-plane system.

“We are providing premier cardiovascular care at St. Luke’s Health-Memorial, and this new cath lab helps us expand our services for the well-being of our community,” said Stacy Garcia, Market Administrator of the Cardiovascular Service Line. “Our patients deserve the very best, and we are proud to have this top-of-the-line technology right here in East Texas.”

In a bi-plane cath lab system, two independent imaging devices go around the patient to provide interventional cardiologists the best possible field of view when performing cardiac procedures.

With Memorial’s investment of nearly $2.1 million, the new Toshiba Infinix Dual Plane cath lab delivers high quality images of the heart with the lowest dose of radiation possible. This is the second bi-plane cath lab in operation at the Lufkin facility. The hospital also operates an outpatient diagnostic cath lab at the Heart and Vascular Imaging Center, conveniently located within the Heart Institute of East Texas.

The first cardiac catheterization procedure, using this new state-of-the-art technology, was performed on Tuesday, August 16 by Dr. Ravinder S. Bachireddy.