A public health expert has defended the death rates for heart operations at a Coventry hospital after figures showed they were three times the national average.

The highly critical report on Coventry's Walsgrave Hospital was published in The Times newspaper's consultants guide.

It revealed that 3.1% was the mortality rate for patients undergoing angioplasties, whereby a balloon is inflated in diseased and narrow arteries.

The national mortality rate for such operations is said to be 1.2%

Cardiac 'twinning'

But a report by Coventry Health Authority's director of public health, Dr Keith Williams, has attempted to reassure the public.

Dr Williams said the figure for patients waiting for heart surgery, as opposed to emergency admissions, was 1.4%.

"Anyone who is on the waiting list for angioplasty has no reason to be concerned," he said.

Dr Williams said the Walsgrave had also been contending with a high number of emergency admissions from other areas of the West Midlands.

And the pressure on the hospital should be eased when a specialist cardiac centre opens in Wolverhampton in 2003, he said.

His report also includes a recommendation that the cardiac department of the Walsgrave should "twin" with another centre in an attempt to share expertise and best practice.

Patients' suitability for emergency angioplasties could also be better assessed, said Dr Williams.

The Walsgrave is currently waiting to see if outside managers will be brought in as the government prepares to assesses its overall performance.

Four health trusts in the south of England have already been taken over after gaining a "no-star rating" in government performance league tables.