Pillows just the ticket for cardiac patients

Roy Simpson with his 'cough pillow'. Photo / Christine Cornege

A special pillow designed to help prevent pneumonia in recovering heart surgery patients is being handed out in Hamilton hospitals.

The pillows have been available in Auckland for two years but in the Waikato patients have had to make do with rolled up towels pressed to their chest.

Heart health advocate for the Heart Foundation in Hamilton, Ruth Strawbridge, has spent six months co-ordinating the introduction of 1000 pillows for cardiac surgery patients at Waikato, Braemar and Southern Cross hospitals.

The pillows provide support to the sternum or breastbone, which has been cut open during the operation, allowing patients to cough - a necessary exercise after cardiac surgery - without bursting their stitches.

"After surgery patients often get pneumonia. So the physiotherapists get them to hold something against their chest so they can cough [to clear the lungs]," Mrs Strawbridge said. "Up until now what they used ... after cardiac surgery was a couple of towels rolled up in a hospital pillowcase."

At $8 a pillow inner, the project, funded by some of the $21,000 raised during last year's Heart Foundation annual appeal, has so far cost $8000.

Thanks to a circle of 20 volunteer sewers from Hamilton and Morrinsville who have been busy putting together the pillow covers free, the cost has been kept to a minimum.

Patients from the wider Midland region including Gisborne, New Plymouth, Rotorua, Tauranga and Thames will benefit from the pillows, which they can take home.

The pillows help prevent complications in all types of heart surgery and can even soften the effect of a car seat belt to make the journey home from hospital more comfortable.

The first pillow was handed out at Waikato Hospital on Thursday and Mrs Strawbridge hopes money raised from this week's annual Heart Foundation appeal and every year will help keep the project going indefinitely.

A street appeal will be held nationwide this Friday.

One person dies every 90 minutes in New Zealand from coronary heart disease such as heart attacks, cardiac failure and strokes.