New Trauma Theatre commissioned & ready for use

As one of inner Sydney’s busiest trauma centres, St Vincent’s Emergency Department sees upwards of 42,000 presentations every year, with up to 300 of those patients presenting with acute multi-trauma and life threatening conditions. 

For these patients, time to diagnosis, treatment and surgery can be the difference between permanent physical and/or neurological damage, and even life or death.

To enhance St Vincents’ trauma and other surgical-specialty services and provide the most advanced equipment available, St Vincent’s Curran Foundation raised almost $12 million to build a new state-of-the-art, hybrid trauma operating suite.

The theatre houses the newest hybrid technologically available, known as RAPTOR (Resuscitation with Angiography, Percutaneous Techniques and Operative Repair), the new theatre provides a one-stop-shop for treating the most critical trauma patients.

“It does much more complex but minimally invasive work, and its capability transitions across cardiac surgery, vascular surgery, cardiology and respiratory so it allows us to perform a lot of procedures that are not feasible in a normal operating suite”, said Dr Paul Jansz, Cardiothoracic Surgeon and Director of St Vincent’s Heart & Lung Transplant Unit.

The new hybrid theatre allows surgical teams to provide more non-invasive interventions, with technology that allows the team to scan and image the body while in surgery. The imaging technique is supported by surrounding monitors, and importantly, the theatre is equipped with a control room to guide the surgical team in situ. 

“We can see what we’re doing on the inside of the body, be that placing a valve, placing an artificial pump or stopping bleeding in someone who’s undergone a trauma”, Jansz said.

The theatre space is designed to allow for multiple teams to be working at the same time, meaning patients won’t need to be moved about the hospital for diagnostics and other treatments, saving precious time in those critical first few hours following serious trauma or injury.

“This operating suite has been on our wish list for many years”, said A/Prof Tony Grabs, Director of Trauma, and Surgical Stream Director.

“In the past we’ve had to fragment patient care in many areas of the hospital, but this suite allows us to do the complete treatment for the patient right here. There are no other areas of the hospital that can provide treatment that we can’t provide in this room”.

The beauty of this is, it’s time saving and it can be life-saving”, said Tony.