Variance Moves Kent Hospital Closer to Offering Angioplasty

Kent Hospital has cleared an important hurdle in its effort to offer angioplasty to heart-attack patients. The Health Department this week granted the Warwick hospital a variance from rules mandating that angioplasty be performed only at hospitals with heart- surgery programs.

Kent doesn’t perform heart surgery, so heart-attack patients who needed angioplasty have to be moved to another hospital. The procedure involves threading slender tubes into the heart to open clogged arteries.

Now, Kent needs to demonstrate that an angioplasty program there is needed and worth the expense, under the state’s certificate of need program. That application is to be filed in June.

Dr. David R. Gifford, director of the Health Department, specified that only emergency angioplasties would be allowed at Kent.

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