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The recently launched cath lab and adult cardiology services at Mediclinic Cape Town add a new level of patient-centred care.
Discover how this offering improves access to heart care in the Cape Town City Bowl.
How a local cath lab helps surrounding community
The new adult cardiology service at Mediclinic Cape Town focuses on early detection and prevention of heart disease through risk assessment, management and advanced imaging for accurate diagnosis, explains cardiologist Dr Zesi Ngubane. It also offers minimally invasive procedures to treat coronary artery disease, along with dedicated heart failure care.
Central to this offering is the hospital’s new catheter lab, which opened in September 2025. This specialised room uses imaging to visualise, diagnose and treat heart conditions. Its main equipment is a C-arm X-ray machine that can move into different positions, explains Dr Ngubane. “It enables us to see the arteries of the heart.”
As only the second cath lab in the immediate area, the facility at Mediclinic Cape Town offers clear benefits. Located across from an old-age home, it gives elderly residents near-immediate access to cardiac care. With local cardiologists often fully booked, patients have had to travel outside the City Bowl, but this service adds much-needed capacity and expertise for patients in the area.
“With a heart attack, time is muscle,” says Dr Ngubane. “The longer the arteries are blocked, the more damage it can do to the heart muscle, causing heart failure down the line. So, with us being in the area, a patient’s artery can be opened sooner rather than later – a potentially life-saving benefit.”
Cath lab procedures
One of the main procedures performed in the cath lab is balloon angioplasty. “We first X-ray the patient and give contrast liquid, which allows us to visualise the vessels and see exactly where an artery blockage is,” Dr Ngubane explains. Then the balloon angioplasty is done, where doctors guide an uninflated balloon to the affected artery through a catheter. “We inflate the balloon in the area around the blockage to open that vessel and place a stent in it. The stent is like a small coil that opens and serves as a type of scaffold, keeping the vessel open and relieving the obstruction. This then ends the heart attack.”
The cath lab also allows the team to perform intravascular ultrasound within the heart’s arteries, says Dr Ngubane, producing 360° images of the vessel walls. “The ultrasound probe is millimetres thick, and through a catheter, we put it inside the vessel, where we can do a sonar inside the artery of the heart, and determine what’s causing that narrowing.”
Transoesophageal echocardiograms (TOEs) are also performed in the cath lab, she adds. “This specialised, minimally invasive ultrasound involves passing a probe down the oesophagus to capture high-resolution, real-time images of the heart’s structure, especially the valves and back chamber. “This can guide procedures or help doctors check for blood clots before performing a cardioversion – a controlled electric shock used to treat abnormal heart rhythms like atrial fibrillation. Doctors can also implant pacemakers, which treat arrythmias – irregular heartbeats – or heart failure, in the cath lab.
The elderly often present with valvular heart disease, Dr Ngubane continues, commonly in the form of aortic stenosis, where the valve is narrowed. “Here we do procedures called transcatheter aortic valve replacement, known as TAVIs, a minimally invasive technique where we go into the heart through the groin and put in a new valve without having to perform open heart surgery.” This comes with faster recovery times and less risk of infection.
Mediclinic Cape Town also offers lithotripsy in its cath lab – a capability not available in all labs, Dr Ngubane adds. “When we're treating a lesion, sometimes there is a lot of cement-like calcium, which interferes with the insertion of the stent. We must therefore first modulate this calcium through a lithotripsy, which gives pulses of radio frequency that break apart that calcium, allowing us to deploy the stent.”
Specialised medical team
While cardiological training involves the use of cath lab equipment, it’s a specialised area of medicine in which Dr Ngubane has extensive experience. As working in the cath lab is very different to theatre work, nurses at the hospital receive specialised training. The hospital has also hired new staff with cath lab expertise.
“We all need to have the same mindset in the cath lab, as one mistake can be fatal,” explains Dr Ngubane. “I wanted people who were insightful, whom I could rely on to treat these patients, which is what we have now. The more experienced nurses and I also train junior staff, who, beyond the cath lab, monitor patients in high care following cardiology interventions.” The focus remains on delivering expert, individualised care tailored to each patient’s needs.