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THE number of life-saving heart operations carried out at the Royal Bolton Hospital is to be massively increased.

More pacemakers and other complex devices, which ensure the heart is working properly, will be fitted than ever before under new plans.

Hospital bosses have been given an initial £1.1 million to build the specialist facilities needed for the surgery to take place.

An extra £1.1 million will be added to the hospital's yearly budget to carry out the operations.

Building work will start next year, although some of the additional procedures will be carried out in existing operating theatres at the hospital this year.

It will be just one of three centres in Greater Manchester that will carry out the surgery.

Ironically, the newly built operating theatre will be on the site of the hospital's former smoking room.

Lesley Doherty, director of nursing at the Royal Bolton Hospital, said: "It's poetic justice that the new building will be in the smoking room. "Even though building work won't start until next year, we can increase our capacity to fit more pacemakers to patients needing this in Bolton."

Statistically, heart disease is the biggest premature killer in Bolton and life expectancy in the borough is two years less than the national average.

Men live just 74.4 years on average, 2.2 years less than the rest of the country, and women 79.1 years, just under two years less than the national average.

A recent study by NHS North-west estimated one in 10 people - 23,000 residents - aged between 35 and 79 in Bolton would develop heart disease. Figures showed that people of South Asian origin were more likely to suffer from heart disease and 11 per cent of Bolton's population is made up of this ethnic group, compared to 1.3 per cent in Wigan and 3.9 per cent in Salford.

At present, about 150 pacemakers and 100 complex heart devices, such as heart valves, are fitted at the Royal Bolton Hospital every year, but this will rise to 200 pacemakers and 130 complex devices when the facilities are up and running.

9:57am Friday 2nd February 2007

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