ISLANDER Grenville Roberts sat up in bed days after major heart surgery and declared: "This place is like a hotel."

The 61-year-old is one of the first patients at the new £15million heart and lung unit in Clydebank, which was officially launched yesterday to treat urgent cases from all over west Scotland.

Mr Roberts was born with a hole in his heart. It had not stopped him working on an estate in Mull, but four years ago he began to get breathless.

Then, last year, his heart began failing because of a leaky valve, which needed open heart surgery.

But his eyes were opened when he was sent to the new centre based at the Golden Jubilee Hospital. He had surgery 10 days ago and is now recovering.

"They have given me a new heart valve and fixed the hole and I am already feeling a lot better," said Mr Roberts.

He said the wards felt more like a hotel: "I have never seen anywhere like it. This place is unbelievable.

"Even the food is great."

Mr Roberts stayed at the Beardmore Hotel, which is part of the same building as the former HCI hospital, and it is also available to relatives of patients from remote areas.

"My son Carl brought me on the Friday and I stayed the weekend in the hotel. It was magic."

Staff, including nurse Eilidh Robertson, have helped him rebuild his strength.

Mr Roberts, who has two grown-up children and three grand-daughters, lives at Carsaig, in the south of the island, and is responsible for running an estate, doing everything from routine building maintenance to feeding newborn lambs abandoned by their mothers.

Open heart surgery and transplants are just part of the workload for the The West Of Scotland Regional Heart And Lung Centre, which will also offer lung and gullet surgery for patients, many of whom will have cancer.

Dr Ken Ferguson, medical director at the Jubilee, said: "Having the services, and the expertise, concentrated on one site allows us to offer improved access for patients.

"We have gone from bare bricks on spare floors of the hospital to a hi-tech unit in two years and are already seeing advances in treatment and imaging put into practice."

Doctors can view 3D scans of damaged organs to plan treatment or surgery.

And a catheter lab can carry out procedures such as angiograms, to let doctors see blocked heart arteries, and angioplasties, to reopen blood vessels.

The centre brings together staff who previously worked at the Western Infirmary, Glasgow, Hairmyres Hospital in East Kilbride, and Glasgow Royal Infirmary, including the transplant unit that is now the Scottish Advanced Heat Failure Service.

It will also house two other national services, the Pulmon-ary Vascular unit and Adult Congenital Heart Service.

Consultant Keith Oldroyd, the centre's clinical director of cardiology, said: "I backed the concept from the start.

"Bringing the teams together was the only way to offer the level of 24/7 emergency care people need."

While some patients in Glasgow have rapid access to angioplasties to reopen arteries after a heart attack, most have to go to their local hospital and then be transferred if they do not respond to clotbusting drugs.

AT some point in the future, Dr Oldroyd believes anyone with a heart attack will be able to go straight to the specialist centre, by air ambulance if need be, thanks to the Golden Jubilee's helipad.

The centre has spent £4million on specialist equipment, including an MRI scanner and an IT system that lets doctors at any hospital view heart scans without waiting for copies ferried by taxi to their own clinic.

Dr Oldroyd, who still sees patients at the Western, said: "Many of us are still based at other hospitals, so the technology here means we can see a patient's scan and reports immediately without having to wait for someone to burn a CD and courier it over."

The system also gives GPs detailed information to share with patients and the scans can be viewed by casualty staff if a patient has an emergency after returning home.

The centre will serve 2.2million people in the areas covered by the four west Scotland boards, as well as Forth Valley and the Western Isles.

Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who is also Scottish Health Secretary, said: "Clinicians will share valuable experience, and create an unrivalled knowledge base."