New hybrid theatre to be created at The Royal Oldham Hospital

A new special hybrid operating theatre is to be created at The Royal Oldham Hospital.

The project, which will see the conversion of the existing theatre number three at the hospital, will cost £1.3 million and will take around three months to complete.

Known as the specialist vascular service theatre, the hybrid operating room will be a state-of-the-art environment where high definition imaging and surgical tools are available. The surgical theatre will be equipped with an advanced medical imaging scanner which will allow for advanced imaging to be available at all times during invasive procedures on patients undergoing endovascular operations. This will mean that patients will be able to have any imaging and surgical procedures simultaneously, rather than having to go through two different procedures on separate occasions.

Mr Riza Ibrahim, consultant vascular surgeon at The Royal Oldham Hospital, said: “This is a very exciting development for the Trust in terms of offering a new high tech theatre which combines a normal operating theatre with an ultra-high quality fixed imaging suite. It can function as either a conventional operating theatre, or as a state-of-the-art imaging facility, and crucially allows intra and post-operative imaging and intervention on the operating table.”

Work on the conversion of the theatre will start in the first week of January, for completion by the end of March 2015.

Graham Lord, Head of Estate Development at The Pennine Acute Trust which runs The Royal Oldham Hospital, said: “The work to convert the theatre will take around three months as we change the internal layout of the room and alter the ventilation system. We will try to keep disruption to patients, visitors and staff to a minimum, but there will be some noise disturbance particularly during the first couple of weeks of work. This will predominantly affect the adjacent theatres one and two, and gynaecology ward F1 and gynaecology assessment unit F2 which are immediately below theatre three.

“We will try to minimise the noise disruption with the worse of the building strip out of walls and floors taking place over the weekend periods. However, there will still be normal general builder’s noise during normal working hours, for which we apologise.”

The work to convert the theatre will be carried out by GE Healthcare and their supply chain who will supply, install and commission the scanner and Maquet who will supply the new theatre light and pendants.