Billionaire praises Wolverhampton's New Cross Hospital after pioneering heart surgery

And when it comes to his health, self-made billionaire Robert Gaines-Cooper has been able to pick and choose any hospital in the world.

Now in his late 70s and suffering heart defects, the entrepreneur has just undergone pioneering surgery at New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton.

Writing to the Express & Star, he praises NHS staff who treated him and says is plans to throw a party to thank them.

He said: "I am a very lucky man whose multiple medical problems have been taken care of by some of the world's finest hospitals.

"My atrial-fibrillation was adroitly handled by Dr Andrea Natalie in the California Pacific Hospital in San Francisco. A one shot total success which, of course, is rare. I have also suffered three lots of cancer. The first, prostate, dealt with at the Singapore General Hospital, cancer of the urethra dealt with at The University Hospital Singapore and finally, bladder cancer dealt with at MD Anderson, the world famous cancer hospital in Houston, Texas.

"Having given myself a year off to recover from all these activities, I was scheduled to have open heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for a new aortic valve."

But Mr Gaines-Cooper's operation was cancelled and he decided to look where could treat him using a pioneering piece of equipment he has helped promote.

The PneuX Life System is a valve that helps prevent Ventilator Assisted Pneumonia (VAP) which is one of the main causes of death in hospitals

"Last year the British National Health Service gave a grant for the Wolverhampton Hospital to carry out an Independent Clinical Trial on the PneuX Life System," he said.

"After a random selection of 240 cardiac patients their success in reducing pneumonia was quite remarkable and indeed the clinicians concerned published a clinical paper on December 26 last year.

"It struck me this was a hospital I should visit and ask the clinicians whether in fact I should have the operation with them.

"From meeting Dr Heyman Luckraz and Dr Saib Khogali it was obvious that these were outstanding clinicians of exceptional ability. I was told that as I was advancing in years it would be better for me to have a minimally invasive operation, as open heart surgery would be very traumatic for me and the risk in a re-operation considerably greater.

"They explained that the New Cross Hospital had now been working for the last right years on a wonderful new advice called a TAVI (Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation) and that this would be done under local anaesthetic although, of course, I would be well sedated but aware of what was going on. I have no doubt that had I been unfortunate enough to contract pneumonia the PneuX Life System could be called to the rescue.

"The operation took only three hours and was carried out like a well-oiled machine.

"Unfortunately my kidneys stopped working and I had to go into the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and placed on dialysis for two and a half days. The ICU was superbly laid out, with the beds in an open plan area, but with curtains for the necessary privacy. Every patient had one nurse in attendance and because it was so well staffed and the nurses were in close proximity the alarms was set at a very low level.

"This in contrast at MD Anderson where one nurse would be looking after two or three private rooms, the alarms were deafening and extremely unsettling. The attitude of the Wolverhampton nurses, both male and female was quite extraordinary, friendly, cheerful and yet totally professional. Another extraordinary thing, they all did 12 hour shifts and were as cheerful and charming at the end of the shift as they were at the beginning. My ordeal in Intensive Care was made as pleasant and acceptable as humanly possible.

"The breakfast lady asked me what I fancied for breakfast and so I said 'scrambled egg with a little caviar sprinkled on top'. She asked me 'what sort of luxury hotel I thought I was in,' yet astonishingly brought me some wonderful scrambled egg on toast 20 minutes later. She said she was very sorry she couldn't find any caviar!

"I know that the people in Wolverhampton are well known for their warmth and friendliness, but I certainly had it in abundance. I do wonder how I would have coped with an open heart operation lasting six or seven hours.

"One last point of interest, the clinicians asked me if I had a heart bypass and I said yes in Harley Street in 1991.

When they asked who the surgeon was I said an outstanding surgeon called Mr Wilf Pugsley. They said: 'That is astonishing, because he left Harley Street and came to this hospital and founded our cardiac unit.'

"Unfortunately, I didn't meet him during my stay there, but as I have decided to have a party for all these nice people, I hope he will accept an invitation to come.

"Perhaps the National Health Service should ring-fence this outstanding example of how a hospital should work, analyse it in great detail and then try and create the same magic everywhere else."

Mr Gaines-Cooper moved to the Seychelles in 1976 when Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey introduced a tax on unearned income of 98 per cent.

He set up the Chelle Plastics factory and gain a residency permit.

His latest business interests have been in health care and helped pioneer laryngeal masks to help surgeons and anaesthetists to manage the patient's airway during surgery or emergency medicine. The device has helped more than 300 million patients in operations.

He personally paid for the treatment he received at New Cross.

Dr Jonathan Odum, Medical Director for The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, said: "We are delighted that Mr Gaines-Cooper was so pleased with the care he received and the outcome following his operation. He has been treated by many centres of excellence around the world, including the United States and Switzerland but having been recently diagnosed with critical aortic stenosis he decided to have his treatment here at the Heart and Lung Centre in New Cross Hosptal.

"Rather than have open heart surgery, he underwent transfemoral TAVI (keyhole heart valve implementation) under local anaesthetic with an excellent clinical outcome. We were the first centre in the West Midlands to undertake TAVI in 2008 and won the bids to become the designated regional centre for TAVI. Since then we have made excellent progress and been at the cutting edge of TAVI including clinical development and research publications with national and international recognition.

"Mr Gaines-Cooper did very well indeed and made a rapid recovery following the local anaesthetic. He was impressed by the fact that we could do the procedure under local anaesthetic and at follow-up three weeks ago was doing extremely well. We are one of only a few TAVI centres in UK that routinely undertake the procedure under local anaesthetic. We are recognised nationally as one of the largest volume centres with multi-device and multi-access capability with some of the best results in the country.

"We wish Mr Gaines-Cooper all the best and that he continues to have a good recovery from a serious operation."