By Dayna Giorgio

For patients experiencing a cardiac event, getting the right care as quickly as possible can make all the difference but just as important, is getting care from the right team. Friday, July 7th marks an important milestone as St. Mary’s General Hospital celebrates the 20th anniversary of bringing full-service cardiovascular care to Waterloo Region, transforming, and saving countless lives in our community and beyond.

St. Mary’s world-renowned team of cardiac specialists, medical staff and team members
provide innovative, compassionate and lifesaving care each year serving over 1.4 million
residents in Waterloo Wellington and beyond stretching from Grey Bruce to Haldimand
Norfolk. This community-based hospital has helped put Waterloo Region on the map as a
beacon of hope and home to one of Canada’s top Regional Cardiac Care Centres.

“It is incredible to think about how far we have come in the brief 20 years since the St.
Mary’s Regional Cardiac Care Centre was first established, from the first open heart surgery
to our first minimally invasive valve replacement, and now our thriving Arrhythmia
program—one of the safest and most efficient in the country,” says Dr. Heather Warren,
Vice President of Medical Programs & Quality and Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine at St.
Mary’s. “Through support of the St. Mary’s General Hospital Foundation, donors, and the
tremendous support from this community, we continue to expand and evolve to meet the
clinical needs of our rapidly growing and diverse population, providing the highest quality
Cardiovascular care. I couldn’t be prouder of our team and what they’ve accomplished and
look forward to what comes next for the program and our patients.”

Prior to becoming a full-service cardiovascular site 20 years ago, St. Mary’s cardiologists
could diagnose cardiac conditions, but care had to be transferred to hospitals outside of the
community in London, Hamilton or Toronto. For patients, it meant more time away from
home, from loved ones and the specialized care that they needed. For patients with urgent
and emergent needs, it meant additional time travelling to the care that they needed
quickly—time that they often didn’t have to spare.

In 1999, St. Mary’s was named the site for the new Regional Cardiac Care Centre, but it
took the next four years for this plan for full service cardiovascular care to become a
reality. Beginning with clinical cardiology and cardiodiagnostics services, expanding to
include diagnostic cardiac catheterization, and in 2003, St. Mary’s team celebrated the first
percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) or angioplasty (the opening up of a diseased heart blood vessel with a balloon and stent procedure). July 7, 2003 marked the final step in becoming a full-service Cardiovascular Care centre: the completion of the first open heart surgery at St. Mary’s.

Over the years, the number of patients that the hospital cares for continues to grow
exponentially as does the range of highly specialized, innovative cardiac services. Through
the support of St. Mary’s highly skilled team and our generous donors, this award-winning
hospital has a well-deserved reputation for being on the leading edge of cardiac care
worldwide.

20 Years of Cardiac Care Milestones:
● 1999 – St. Mary’s General Hospital is named as the site for the new Regional Cardiac
Care Centre.
● 2003 – St. Mary’s performs its first open heart surgery bringing full-service
cardiovascular care to Waterloo Region as the Regional Cardiac Care Centre. That
year, 450 cardiovascular surgeries were performed nearly doubling that last year.
● 2013 – St. Mary’s Regional Cardiac Care Centre celebrates its 10th anniversary.
● September 20, 2018 – The first Transcatheter Aortic Valve Intervention/Replacement
(TAVI) procedure is performed. Prior to this, patients requiring this lifesaving,
innovative and minimally invasive procedure had to travel to Toronto or London. The
program has grown from 25 patients per year to 117 patients last year.
● April 2, 2019 – Demand for cardiac catheterization procedures are stretched beyond
capacity and St. Mary’s launches $2.8 million campaign to bring a much-need third
Cath Lab suite.
● February 21, 2020 – Innovative partnership leverages technology with regional
partners to help provide cardiac care closer to home for many patients. An essential
cardiac diagnostic test, known as an echocardiogram or heart ultrasound, can now
be performed at one of five local hospitals, with the images electronically transferred
to St. Mary’s for review and interpretation by one of the teams Cardiologists
specializing in this procedure, decreasing the need for patients to travel far from
home for diagnostic testing.
● January 12, 2021 – Patients begin receiving ablation procedures to treat heart
rhythm issues at St. Mary’s Regional Cardiac Care Centre are sharing their gratitude
as they experience a new lease on life.
● May 12, 2021 – Ribbon-cutting ceremony marks the completion of the final phase of
redevelopment for St. Mary’s Heart Rhythm Program. Local patients needing complex
studies and ablation treatment for heart rhythm issues no longer have to travel to
London, Hamilton or Toronto. The project came together in four phases through the
support of the Ministry of Health and our generous community who donated $5.6
million the total cost of $13 million:
– The Device and Arrhythmia Clinic on the first floor opened in November 2020
– The EP Suite was completed in January 2021
– The Pre/Post-Heart Investigation Unit (PHIU) opened in March 2021;
and
– The Cath lab recliner space and clerical space was finished in May.
● July 22, 2021 – Cardiac Rehabilitation Program celebrates the grand opening of the
new Cardio-Pulmonary Rehabilitation Clinic program at the Boardwalk. The new clinic
features a walking track, in-house stress testing, in-person and virtual hybrid
programming that is easily accessible. The space is more than 16,000 square feet
and will serve between 300 and 500 patients per year using a variety of program
methods, both on-site and virtual.
● 2022 –
– First in the province to transition cardiac rehab safely back to in-person
programming post pandemic and introduced a heart function stream to
support patients
– Achieves first same-day non-invasive heart valve replacement (TAVI)
discharge making St. Mary’s one of only a handful of centres to accomplish
this in Ontario
– Introduces PFO as a new procedure as part of St. Mary’s structural heart
program—already achieving one of the shortest turn-over times in the
province
– Surpasses 100 fluoroless electrophysiology (EP) ablations this year reducing
time and exposure to radiation for patients and staff—achieving >90% of
procedures being done this way
– Over 5,500 Cath Lab procedures performed annually—43% higher
productivity than adjacent hospital Cath Labs.
– St. Mary’s becomes a teaching hospital for the Internal Medicine training
program for the Michael G. DeGroote Faculty of Medicine for McMaster
University. Doctors in training from the Waterloo campus now receive their
core Cardiology training at St. Mary’s proudly training the next generation.
Unique Achievements:
– Most efficient EP lab in Ontario performing four ablations in one lab a day.
– One of only a few Cardiac centres in the province to offer and perform the Ross
Procedure, known also as the switch procedure or pulmonary autograft procedure, in
which a patient’s diseased aortic valve is replaced with their own pulmonary valve
followed by a pulmonary allograft.
– Since 2016, the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) Cardiac Care
Quality Indicators Report, comparing cardiac programs across the country, has
consistently placed St. Mary’s among the top cardiac programs in Canada.

Dayna Giorgio is Manager, Communications at St. Mary’s General Hospital.