Klaus Faber Foundation enables construction of a hybrid operating theatre at the CaritasKlinikum

A donation from the charitable Klaus Faber Foundation has helped the CaritasKlinikum Saarbrücken St. Theresia install a state-of-the-art hybrid operating theatre in conjunction with an investment by its owner.

The chairman of the foundation, Klaus Faber, officially handed over the donation to the cts Chairman of the Board and Landtag member Tobias Hans, cts CEO Rafael Lunkenheimer, the board of directors of the CaritasKlinikum and chief physician Prof. Dr. med. Kindermann on Friday, who accepted it on behalf of the clinic’s employees in the presence of the Saarland’s Minister of Health, Monika Bachmann and the Klaus Faber Foundation Council.

The Klaus Faber Foundation has been dedicating itself to the areas of medical research and applied medicine ever since its inception. With its financial assistance for this project, the foundation is making an important contribution which will enable patients from Saarbrücken and its environs to expect even better healthcare at the CaritasKlinikum St. Theresia in the future. The hybrid operating theatre combines the diagnostic potentials of high-precision imaging with the hygienic standards and safety of a fully-fledged surgery room.

"Supporting this project with endowments is a personal concern of Mr. Klaus Faber. We are very happy to accept this offer and greatly delighted by it as it puts us in a position to further improve the treatment concepts and medical quality of the healthcare provided for our patients, primarily in cardiology, but also in other departments, in connection with this equipment-related investment”, says cts CEO Rafael Lunkenheimer.

The hybrid OP for example enables the performance of complex, minimally invasive vascular interventions for reopening blocked blood vessels or for eliminating life-threatening, pathological vascular dilations (aneurysms). Switching to an open surgical procedure is meanwhile possible at any time. This means that catheter treatments for reopening blood vessels can be performed in the same place as the bypass creation in vascular surgery, to name just two examples.

The high-quality angiography system of the hybrid operating theatre supplements the existing facility in the clinic’s cardiac catheter lab. This helps to ensure that the emergency treatment of acute heart attacks or swift provision of pacemakers to patients with dangerously slow cardiac arrhythmias can even be guaranteed if one of the systems is occupied or malfunctioning in future. In addition, it also brings significant improvements for the implantation of heart pacemakers and defibrillators, which can now be based on the best X-ray imaging available.

 For the attending doctors and nurses, the equipment of the high-tech operating theatre provides for optimized workflows and a better dovetailing of disciplines because it supports the interdisciplinary teamwork of specialists. It furthermore obviates the need for risky transports to another operating theatre, especially where emergency patients are concerned.  

"We thank the Klaus Faber Foundation for its generous support of this cost-intensive project. The installation of a hybrid operating theatre boosts the trans-regional importance of the CaritasKlinikum St. Theresia in the treatment of seriously ill patients and is a real milestone”, emphasized cts Chairman of the Board, Tobias Hans.