St. John Medical Center got a heartfelt present Friday and good news for the community. After years of wrangling for permission from the state to perform angioplasties on heart patients, the Department of Health approved the hospital’s request to do the procedure, which involves inserting a balloon into a blocked artery using a catheter.

It means patients needing the procedure — also called percutaneous coronary intervention or PCI — will no longer have to go to Vancouver or Portland hospitals.

“This is a great step forward for local cardiac care,” Kirk Raboin, St. John’s director of cardiac services, said Friday. “This morning the state removed the final administrative hurdle, and St. John is now one step closer to realizing our vision of bringing this safe and effective procedure to our patients.”

For the past two years, St. John has partnered with Oregon Health & Science University to provide cardiac care to patients, including PCIs. The partnership was with the intent that eventually St. John could perform the procedure.

The hospital plans to begin elective PCIs in January when Dr. Mark Hattenhaur, who was a pioneer in the procedure, comes on board, St. John spokesman Randy Querin said. In the meantime, nurses and other support staff will begin training with cardiac experts from St. John’s sister hospitals in Bellingham and Eugene, which already are doing the procedures. OHSU also will provide training.

“The goal is to begin doing electives, then once we demonstrate that ability, we can move very rapidly to adopt the same approach for acute (emergency) cases,” said Dr. Joaquin Cigarroa, associate chief of cardiology and director of the cardiac catheterization laboratories at OHSU. Cigarroa visits St. John once a week, along with three other OHSU cardiologists, who also make weekly trips. “You’re talking about physicians who will have already done thousands of these procedures. It’s more about understanding the tempo and procedures of your support staff.”

“We won’t sacrifice quality to start this program,” Raboin said. “All of this is being done with a whole medical team — OHSU, our own cardiologist, administration, nursing, the Emergency Department — we’ve got a lot of coordination efforts we’re putting together.”

In three years, St. John expects to be performing 300 angioplasties per year, Raboin said.

“That’s the minimum,” he said. “Statistics-wise, there’s a true need in this community.”

Heart disease is the number-two cause of death in the Lower Columbia Region, according to a St. John question-and-answer Web site about the need for expansion of local cardiac care. The local rate for heart disease is 20 percent higher than the state average, likely due to the area’s high rates of smoking and obesity, the site said, indicating a strong and increasing need for elective PCI care in the community.

In May, the hospital unveiled a new catheterization lab and high-tech imaging machine as part of an overhaul of St. John’s cardiac unit in anticipation of getting the state’s approval for performing PCIs. The old cath lab is being brought up to the same specifications and will be ready next month.

Patients needing open heart surgery will still have to go to Vancouver or Portland.

Adding the PCI procedure will allow St. John to increase all of its cardiac services, because it will make it easier to attract cardiologists to the area, hospital officials have said. In addition to the cardiologist starting in January, OHSU and St. John, together, are recruiting for an additional cardiologist. In the near future, St. John hopes to have the capability to offer PCI care around the clock.

“We have the green light from the state to go forward, we have two new state-of-the-art cath labs, and we have plans in place to delivery this care locally, “ Raboin said. “Patients and their families will no longer have to leave our community for this care.”

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