PLANS by Glasgow Royal Infirmary to head-hunt a new heart transplant surgeon were laid before senior NHS officials yesterday.
The chief executive of the North Glasgow Acute Hospitals Trust, Maggie Boyle, faced her superiors in Edinburgh for the first time since the resignation of the sole existing surgeon, Mr Surendra Naik, threw the Scottish Heart Transplant Centre into crisis last week.
Ms Boyle will return in a few weeks with the wish-list of names from which she hopes to recruit a new staff of lead surgeons for the centre. Until Mr Naik's controversial departure, they had been trying for 18 months, without success, to find him a colleague.
Arrangements put in place to treat patients in the meantime - by sending them to Newcastle for the operation - were approved yesterday at a meeting between trust officials and the NHS's national services division, and Greater Glasgow Health Board.
Meanwhile, Lothian Acute Hospitals Trust said that one of its leading cardiothoracic surgeons, Mr Ciro Campanella, was ''speaking for himself'' when he suggested that the unit should be moved to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
A spokesman said: ''In line with all the trust's cardiac surgeons, Mr Campanella would like to see heart transplant services kept in Scotland. He has not discussed this issue with the trust and the trust is not aware of any of the Glasgow plans.''
It was also revealed yesterday that the NHS in Glasgow could lose another top specialist in a few months. Professor Stan Kaye, professor of oncology at Glasgow University and based at the Beatson Institute at the Western Infirmary, is favourite to take over what is widely regarded as the premier cancer research job in the UK - the chair of oncology at the Institute of Cancer Research attached to the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.
Professor Gordon McVie, director-general of the Cancer Research Campaign, which funds both chairs, said last night: ''The institute chair was the first chair of oncology in the country and is seen as the Godfather chair, the principal one, with our biggest research budget at #10m a year.
''Like all cancer specialists, Stan has his problems with the NHS over budgets, but he is not running away from them - he will hit the same problems at the Marsden and will probably become the Cancer Research Campaign's principal spokesman on these issues.''
He added that the hunt was on for ''Glasgow's next Stan Kaye'', who has been in the job for 15 years.
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