An award-winning Australasian first at Tauranga Hospital is seeing faster access for patients needing long-term heart monitors implanted.

Properly certified nurse's carrying out implantable loop recorder procedures is commonplace in the UK but Adrianna Escondo has become the first Australasian nurse to do the same.

Cardiac Catheter Laboratory nurse Adrianna has performed 20 of the procedures, which cardiologists traditionally perform in theatre. The benefits of the nurse-led initiative were recently recognised with a Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand award.

'It's freeing up our theatres and cardiologists to concentrate on more specialists procedures such as pacemaker, implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillator implants and coronary angiography. Those patients are being seen much sooner as are the patients needing an ILR,” says Adrianne, who became certified to insert ILRs last year.

ILRs are small heart monitoring devices implanted just under the skin in the chest. It takes about 3-5 minutes to implant the heart monitor in the patient's chest in a low-risk procedure under local anaesthetic.

The recorders are typically used for patients with unexplained heart palpitations, sudden light-headedness, dizziness or fainting that are suspicious of irregular heart rhythms.

Cardiologists use information captured on them to determine diagnosis and develop a treatment plan.

Adrianne says performing the procedure in the Day Stay area rather than theatre was also having a positive impact on patients.

'For some, the prospect of going to theatre raises their anxiety levels, especially when the heart's involved. There is comfort in having the procedure done in a non-theatre environment,” he says.

The idea of a cardiac nurse performing the procedure stemmed from the UK. Several NHS hospitals have cardiac nurses inserting the long-term heart monitors.

Tauranga Hospital's Cath Lab opened 18 months ago. The BOPDHB previously operated a shared service and an independent Cath Lab.

Described as a one-stop shop for heart patients, around 1600 cardiac procedures including inserting pacemakers, defibrillators and stents, have been performed onsite. That has boosted cardiac procedures by 20 percent and has reduced the need for patients to travel to Waikato for these specialist services.