HEART attack patients at Princess Margaret Hospital are no longer falling into a treatment black hole because of failings in the hospital's cardiac rehabilitation service.

Swindon's Community Health Council (CHC) says that up to 1,000 patients suffering heart attacks in the last three years may not have been given any rehabilitation treatment following their release from hospital.

Giving patients advice on diet, exercise and medication after a heart attack is today regarded as essential in preventing second heart attacks from happening, and saving the NHS money.

But the CHC, which monitors local health services on behalf of patients, says there was a collapse in cardiac rehabilitation services at the hospital, which first became apparent around three years ago.

The authors of the report, CHC members Rosemarie Phillips and John Walsh, say that in 1998 the PMH rehabilitation service was under-resourced and about to lose its manager.

"We feared for the very existence of the service," they wrote, adding that doctors now working in the department reckon that 1,000 patients may have slipped through the treatment net in the last few years.

But in its latest report, the CHC praises the same services as "almost completely satisfactory and in many aspects much better than that".

It says that the cardiac service is now much better staffed, well organised and running a number of outpatient rehabilitation programmes in places such as the Link Centre, Stratton St Margaret and Marlbor-ough.

Heart attack patients are now clearly identified when they come into hospital, and kept in touch with as they get better, partly through the introduction of a routine check-up a year after their heart attack.

Given extra resources, doctors in the department are even hopeful of tracking some of the patients who fell into the so-called black hole, but the report's authors feel this would now be a daunting task.

"It is to be hoped that at least some of these people will have been offered access to some sort of rehabilitation, either by GP referral, or perhaps with a GP nurse, or as a result of their own initiative," the report says.

"The failure of a rehabilitation service is not as noticeable as the collapse of an A&E service; neither is it nearly as serious in terms of mortality. Nevertheless, the thousand people were in effect abandoned by the care system charged with their welfare, and that fact should not go unrecorded."