TWO brothers have hailed the county’s heart services as they marked the 10th anniversary of an operation to save their dad’s life.

Norman Blackledge, 70, of Great Harwood, underwent an eight-hour operation at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, with surgeons bypassing his heart six times.

His sons, Mark and Heath, who marked the milestone by raising money for the hospital, said that the operation had transformed his life and praised treatment available in East Lancashire and the rest of the county for heart patients.

Mr Blackledge, who had always lived healthily and never smoked, was given an emergency operation after developing serious heart disease. If he had been left on the two-year waiting list that was in place in 1998, surgeons told him he would not have survived.

Up to two years ago all heart patients had to be treated at Blackpool but now there are a range of services available at the Royal Blackburn Hospital, where pacemakers are fitted and angiograms are performed.

Plans to open a second cath lab at the Royal Blackburn Hospital have also been proposed which would mean that angioplasties, where the arteries of the heart are supported, could also be performed there.

For more serious surgery patients are still treated at Blackpool Victoria Hospital.

Mark, 42, said: “Since Dad had the surgery, I have seen it being performed on TV and what the surgeons do really is amazing. My dad’s still going strong 10 years later, and we can’t thank the surgeon Andy Duncan enough for that.”

The brothers first raised money for the hospital with a sponsored triathlon. To mark the tenth anniversary of the surgery, they tested their endurance again, with a gruelling climb up Ben Nevis in September.

They presented the £740 they raised from the climb to Mr Duncan and the money will go to the British Heart Foundation.

Mark, an engineer, said: “Dad’s been doing great since then, and we just wanted to give something back again, because he has been fit and healthy ever since.”