The new unit, if agreed, would be sited at the Golden Jubilee Hospital

The cardio-thoracic unit would be based at the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank and if it gets the go-ahead it could be open by autumn 2006.

NHS Greater Glasgow will launch the 12-week survey, which will include public meetings, on 10 February.

The proposed unit would treat patients from Lanarkshire and the Glasgow area.

People living in the two regions have some of the highest rates of heart disease anywhere in the world.

The centralisation of the services will create one of the largest specialist units in the UK for the investigation and surgical treatment of cardiac and thoracic patients Dr Alan Faichney NHS Greater Glasgow

Cardio-thoracic services are currently provided at Glasgow Royal Infirmary and the city's Western Infirmary.

The original idea was to create a specialist heart and lung surgery unit at Gartnavel General Hospital by 2012 at the earliest, but a team of experts says moving it to the Golden Jubilee will accelerate the plans by six years.

As part of the new proposal, NHS Lanarkshire is also looking to transfer its lung surgery service, currently carried out at Hairmyres Hospital, to the Golden Jubilee.

Its board will be asked to consider and approve its own separate consultation process on the proposals at a meeting on 9 February.

Representatives from NHS Greater Glasgow, NHS Lanarkshire and the Golden Jubilee have been working on the plans to build the new West of Scotland Cardiothoracic Centre at hospital over the past 18 months.

Public viewpoint

One of the lead doctors on the team, cardiothoracic surgeon Dr Alan Faichney, from NHS Greater Glasgow, said: "We listened to our patients and their carers at an early stage of planning to make sure that the qualities they value in our service could be incorporated into our plans.

"We believe that the proposal we have developed does reflect their wishes but we now wish to test this further - with them and with the public in general.

"The centralisation of the services will create one of the largest specialist units in the UK for the investigation and surgical treatment of cardiac and thoracic patients.

"Clinical expertise and high-tech equipment will be concentrated on one site, offering patients in the west of Scotland timely, high quality treatment in a modern custom-built facility."

This is an exciting proposal which would bring together the expertise from three sites into one state-of-the-art NHS hospital Dr Ken Ferguson Golden Jubilee National Hospital

The integration of cardio-thoracic services at the site would make it possible to offer patients a "one-stop" assessment with them undergoing diagnostic tests, surgical consultations and being told whether they need surgery within the same day.

Other benefits would include quicker treatment times, an equity of waiting times for all patients and improved modern facilities for their recovery.

The medical director of the Golden Jubilee National Hospital, Dr Ken Ferguson, was also on the team behind the plans.

He said: "This is an exciting proposal which would bring together the expertise from three sites into one state-of-the-art NHS hospital.

"This proposal would enable us to continue this support and further improve patient services."

Mr Dhru Prakash, consultant thoracic surgeon at Hairmyres Hospital, added: "There are significant benefits this centre could bring to developing future thoracic services and providing access to the latest diagnostic and treatment techniques for patients in the west of Scotland."

Travel concerns

David Clark from the charity Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland, raised concerns about patients having to travel to the hospital from as far as South Lanarkshire.

He said: "There is a trade-off between a real benefit of having treatment in a specialist unit, as against the inconvenience of the longer distances and perhaps fewer visits by relatives.

"Support of relatives can be an important part of recovery."

Scotland's former health minister Malcolm Chisholm expressed concern in 2003 about claims that a new cardiac unit at the Clydebank complex had empty beds while more than 500 people awaited surgery.

The Scottish Executive bought the former private HCI Hospital for �37.5m in June 2002 to increase the number of operations and reduce waiting times.