Doctors are hoping to establish Bradford Royal Infirmary as Yorkshire’s first dedicated centre for the treatment of a heart condition which can make the simplest of activities impossible.

The hospital is one of only five NHS centres in the UK offering an External Enhanced Counter Pulsation service (EECP) to treat patients with refractory angina (RA).

EECP is a non-surgical, mechanical procedure that can reduce the symptoms of angina by increasing blood flow to the damaged areas of the heart.

Nationally there is only one recognised centre at the National RA Centre in Liverpool but it is the vision of clinicians at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to set up as the country’s second centre.

EECP has been taking place at BRI for seven years treating patients from as far afield as Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Midlands.

Consultant cardiologist Dr Chris Morley, who runs the service alongside colleague Dr Paul Sainsbury, said research shows that EECP not only improves a patient’s quality of life significantly, but is cost-effective.

He said: “EECP provides a new therapy for patients who have been told there is no other form of conventional treatment available.

“These patients have a long history of heart disease, usually over 15 years, and they have had every single bit of medical intervention to improve their angina.”

EECP originated in the 1960s when doctors worked out that blood flow back to the heart could be improved when it relaxes by pumping on the legs to ensure that it brought blood back down into the heart.

The fourth-generation EECP bed works by attaching pneumatic blood pressure-type cuffs to the lower calf, lower and mid thighs and upper thighs and buttocks.

Each patient receives 35 hours of a one-hour treatment, five days a week, over seven weeks.

“With any chronic illness, patients need support, education and extreme input management of their anxiety and, for that reason, we are pleased to developed this unique EECP pathway for this group,” said Dr Morley.

Over seven years, Bradford has treated about 180 patients, many from outside West Yorkshire. EECP is not available in pregnancy, for bi-lateral amputees, and those with a large aortic aneurysm, a leaking aortic valve or those with a recent history of DVT or pulmonary embolus.

Retired joiner, Philip Perry, 74, was by his own admission “drinking in the last chance saloon” having been told by surgeons after both a triple and then a double bypass that he could have no more heart operations.

So with his angina getting worse, when doctors at the Bradford Royal Infirmary proposed he try Enhanced External Counter Pulsation (EECP) therapy he was keen to try it out.

Mr Perry said: “My situation was getting more and more dire.

“I was getting increasingly breathless when I tried to do the simplest of things.

“The GP referred me back to Dr Chris Morley who carried out an angiogram on my heart last Christmas which revealed that two arteries were blocked. With surgery no longer possible, Dr Morley sent me to the BRI’s refractory angina clinic which is a last stop shop for people like me where I was offered a number of options including EECP therapy which I opted for because of its good results.”

Now six weeks into a seven-week course Mr Perry says the transformation has been “amazing.” He said: “Since having EECP, I am going for daily walks over a mile and a quarter long. I walk round Yeadon dam with a spring in my step which is completely different to what I could manage before.

“EECP therapy has left me feeling sky high. It has given me back my life again.”