BY DAVID SINCLAIR

Managing Editor

Local residents are being invited to help FirstHealth of the Carolinas celebrate the completion of the Reid Heart Center: The FirstHealth Cardiac and Vascular Institute.

An open house will be held Sunday, Jan. 9, at the 186,000-square-foot facility on the Page Road side of the FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital campus in Pinehurst.

Highlights of the open house, which will be held from 2 to 5 p.m., include tours of the cardiovascular hospital. Refreshments and entertainment will also be a part of the celebration.

Named for longtime FirstHealth supporters Walter and Betty Reid, of Pinehurst, the Reid Heart Center consolidates Moore Regional's cardiac and vascular services into a single location. It includes 27 cardiology/telemetry beds, 30 critical care beds, five cardiac catheterization labs, two electrophysiology suites and six state-of-the-art operating rooms.

Two of the operating rooms have been specially designed as "dual-purpose rooms" for open-heart surgeries as well as interventional cardiac and vascular procedures.

"There's very little by way of cardiac and vascular surgery that we are not already doing, but this new hospital makes room for all the cardiovascular services a patient could need to be consolidated into one place," said Stuart Voelpel, chief operating officer for FirstHealth of the Carolinas and president of Moore Regional Hospital.

Construction of the Reid Heart Center is the latest milestone for Moore Regional's nationally recognized cardiovascular program, which began in July 1987 with the hospital's first diagnostic cardiac catheterization. That procedure was performed by invasive cardiologist Dr. David M. Cowherd, who also did the hospital's first balloon angioplasty in January 1991.

The invasive program paved the way for the hospital's open-heart program, which was started by cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. John F. Krahnert Jr. in September 1990.

During the 2010 fiscal year, FirstHealth's interventional cardiology service performed 7,389 procedures, an average of more than 600 a month, according to a news release from FirstHealth. The three cardiothoracic surgeons performed more than 550 open-heart and thoracic surgeries, an average of more than 45 a month, while three vascular surgeons performed more than 600 vascular surgeries (about 50 a month) during the same period of time.

The Pilot will have comprehensive coverage on the Reid Heart Center with a special section in the Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2011, edition.