By Jill Sperling

ICCHA/WISH

ICCHA/WISH raising money for new hospital equipment on journey to establish a local Cath lab

Nov 15, 2019 | 4:53 PM

KAMLOOPS — The ICCHA/WISH Foundation is taking steps to establish a catheterization lab in Kamloops.

The foundation took on the task of fundraising for cardiac services at Royal Inland Hospital and was successful in establishing the ICCHA/WISH Coronary Care Unit this fall.

But, the work hasn’t stopped there, the foundation is now working its way toward the goal of a Cath lab, saying this service could prevent a thousand patients a year from being transported to Kelowna.

A new fundraising campaign has begun for the purchase of new equipment for cardiac services at the hospital, and former patients are putting their support behind the initiative.

Dean Johnson was 39 years old when he discovered he had a rare birth defect affecting his heart.

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“The heart rate would go up, I would get so light-headed, et cetera, and it finally just came to the point where I would pass out,” Johnson said.

Johnson underwent several tests at Royal Inland Hospital before a CT angiogram revealed the issue. He was then sent to Kelowna for an angiogram.

Johnson says the journey itself was traumatic.

“The day comes, they said we’re off to Kelowna, my girlfriend and family, everyone’s in limbo waiting,” he said. “We get put in the ambulance, we make a stop in Vernon, we’re all over the map in the back of the ambulance, you’re getting tossed around.”

Johnson and other former cardiac patients say RIH needs a Cath lab for non-invasive diagnostics and treatments.

“When you’ve had a heart incident, time is of the essence, it is life and death,” said Dan Bader, who had a heart attack nearly two years ago. “Not having to leave the city and having a Cath lab here would give people the opportunity to have the services performed here locally at home.”

Al Patel and the ICCHA/WISH Foundation are raising $300,000 for a 3D echocardiography machine. It’s one of several steps to be taken before a cath lab can be brought to RIH.

“We’re starting to do a journey to the Cath lab,” Patel said. “So, we have a path to go through, and it is critical. The sooner we raise the money, for each one of them, the quicker we will be able to get the lab.”

The ultimate goal is to establish a Cath lab at RIH, which can only be done with approval from Interior Health.

Currently, IH says cardiac services patient volumes are not sufficient to warrant a need for the lab.

“Interior Health may say that we don’t have the numbers and I say, ‘bring Prince George into our category,'” Patel said. “75 per cent of them go to Vancouver or the Lower Mainland. Why? We have the doctors here.”

For now, Patel is asking people to be ‘Heroes of the Heart’.

“We’re looking for 100 heroes in this community who will raise or donate $1,000,” he said. “100 heroes, I think Kamloops can deliver that.”

More information and donor opportunities can be found on the ICCHA/WISH Fund website.