HEART patients are to benefit from plans to build diagnostic units at smaller hospitals.

The move should speed up tests and allow patients to be seen closer to their homes.

At the moment, patients with suspected coronary heart disease in South Durham, Teesside and part of North Yorkshire have to go to the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough, for angiography tests.

Patients in North Durham have to travel to the Freeman Hospital, in Newcastle.

The tests, which involve passing a tiny plastic tube up into the heart and injecting a contrast material, which will show whether a heart bypass operation is needed, can only be done in a specially-equipped catheter lab.

Currently, catheter labs are only available at the major heart units in Middlesbrough and Newcastle.

This has created a bottleneck and means patients have to travel considerable distances to undergo the process, which is known as cardiac catheterisation.

Now it has been revealed that new catheter labs are to be built at Darlington Memorial Hospital and the University Hospital of North Durham.

It is understood there are also proposals to build another angiography unit, at either the University Hospital of North Tees or the University Hospital of Hartlepool.

While there are no plans at present to build a catheter lab at the Friarage Hospital, in Northallerton, the expansion in test centres elsewhere should give North Yorkshire patients quicker access to the Middlesbrough unit.

Dr Jim Hall, head of cardiothoracic services at James Cook, said: "In order to meet the Government's national targets and timetables on coronary heart disease we need to expand the amount of diagnostic centres.

"If we are going to do more angioplasty (unblocking arteries with tiny balloons) at James Cook, we cannot do all the extra angiography that's needed as well."

The consultant cardiologist, who is involved in planning the region's expansion of heart facilities, said that by building more units in the smaller, feeder hospitals, patient access to services would be improved.

Dr Jerry Murphy, consultant cardiologist at Darlington Memorial, said: "It is very exciting, the whole service for heart patients is being redesigned."

Earlier this week, it was revealed that a temporary shortage of consultant anaesthetists at James Cook - due to illness - had led to one in five bypass operations being put on hold