LEWISTON – St. Mary’s can do emergency angioplasty surgery again. Hospital officials held a news conference Wednesday to announce the receipt of a letter from the state Department of Health and Human Services giving it permission to resume the procedure.

Last May, after doing six of the surgical procedures over a five-month span, the state ordered the hospital to stop, pending review.

“Certainly heart disease is one of the biggest health threats in this community,” said James Cassidy, chief executive officer of St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center. “We feel (angioplasty) is an absolute essential service for our patients.”

The procedure is performed on people coming through the emergency room with acute heart attacks or cardiac infarctions, Dr. Alan Langburd said. Both indicate a blood clot is clogging an artery; that artery has to be opened.

Angioplasty involves inserting a tiny balloon into a narrowed or blocked blood vessel and inflating it in an effort to boost blood flow.

The goal with emergency angioplasty is to have it cleared 90 minutes after the patient comes through the door. It’s more successful and more effective than “clot-buster” drugs, Langburd said.

Several hospitals in Maine, including Central Maine Medical Center, also perform the procedure. Last spring the state questioned whether St. Mary’s first had to get a certificate of need to add emergency angioplasty to its roster of services.

It doesn’t.

Bill Perfetto, from the DHHS’ Certificate of Need Unit, wrote in a Nov. 29 letter to the hospital that the capital expenses, cost and number of anticipated surgeries a year – about 40 – fell under the threshold for needing a certificate. He intends to monitor the program for the next three years.

Cassidy said the procedure will start again in January. During the last few months, patients requiring emergency angioplasty have elected to go to CMMC or Maine Medical Center.

“To provide this service to people that come to our ER will clearly save lives,” he said.

Langburd described the procedure as inserting a 3-foot tube into a patients’ thigh and snaking it up to the heart. A dye is injected, giving doctors a visual on the clog. He said a tiny balloon is inserted to ease the artery open and a stent, something like the spring on a ball-point pen, keeps it that way.

The patient is conscious the whole time, under local sedation. Ninety-five percent of acute heart attacks are treated with emergency angioplasty, Langburd said, and the success rate under an experienced crew is also 95 percent.

Physicians trained to do the procedure are on call at all times at St. Mary’s and also rotate through Maine Med, spokeswoman Kayt DeMerchant said.