CRITICALLY ill patients and their relatives will be the latest to benefit from re-vamps at Blackpool Victoria Hospital as a new state-of-the art intensive care unit opens.

The ICU, with the most modern intensive care facilities in the country, opened at the Vic on Tuesday (October 2).

The eight-bedded unit has a new high-tech system that monitors critically ill patients around the clock. There are also two hotel-style rooms to enable relatives of patients to stay close to them and a specialist counselling room.

The unit's new monitoring system can take measurements of the patients' vital cardiovascular and respiratory status on a beat to beat basis with the information recorded on each patient's own electronic chart. This allows the unit to work toward a paperless system, enabling the nursing staff to spend more time caring for patients.

And the hospital's old intensive care unit is being transformed into an eight-bedded High Dependency Unit (HDU), allowing the hospital to expand its critical care services.

A hospital spokeswoman said that the HDU would be ready in time for winter, making it less likely that patients would have to be transferred to hospitals outside the area. She said it would significantly reduce the likelihood of major elective operations having to be postponed because of a shortage of critical care beds.

And the new facilities for the relatives of adult patients at the intensive care unit-- two overnight stay rooms with en-suite facilities -- are believed to be the only ones in the North West at present.

Both rooms and the counselling room have been fully furnished through the Linzie Nolan Memorial Trust Fund, set up by Brian and Margaret Senior, whose 26-year-old daughter Linzie die in the ICU at the Vic in 1991.

The fund raised more than £15,000 in support of the ICU. Linzie's parents said that the new relative areas were of a very high standard and they were proud that these new facilities would be a lasting memory of their daughter.

Dr Chris Clarke, director of critical care, said that staff, patients and visitors would notice a real difference. "The new unit is bright, light and airy and features state-of-the-art facilities, enabling us to offer the highest possible standard of care to patients.

"As well as improving services for patients and their relatives we hope that the opening of a brand new modern unit will also attract high calibre critical care staff to our hospital.

"It's an exciting time for Blackpool and we are delighted that the years of hard work that we have put into the designing and planning of the unit have finally paid off," he said.

The unit opened a week after the Vic was awarded three star status, recognising the highest levels of performance.