Lowcountry hospital opens with $30 million operating room expansion

NORTH CHARLESTON, SC (WCSC) – As the Lowcountry’s population continues to grow, Trident Medical Center plans to open its latest expansion to serve the community this month.

Trident Medical Center has been working on an expansion for about a year, and hospital officials say they are on track to open the first phase of the project this month. The $30 million project will expand the hospital’s surgical services and increase its ability to serve the community.

The first phase of this expansion will include the opening of three new operating rooms, a hybrid operating room, eight recovery units and a new entrance to the ambulatory care center. The rooms will be larger and will provide more space for the new technologies the hospital is implementing. These rooms will be equipped with new robotic technology that will give the hospital more surgical options.

Hospital officials say the operating rooms will serve a variety of specialties, but the hospital has the greatest demand for space for cardiac and vascular surgeries, head and neck cancers and trauma. Trauma surgeries will be a priority for the new facility because Trident Medical Center saw more than 2,500 trauma cases last year, more than any other hospital in the region.

Dr. Kellie Amodeo, a trauma surgeon at Trident, says the expansion was a necessary addition as the hospital and community continue to grow.

“We have a good number of operating rooms and, of course, a great team. But as our volume has increased significantly over the last few years, we really needed more space to be able to do more cases at once, hire more staff and be able to better serve the region,” Amodeo says.

David Mizzell is the director of surgical services at Trident Medical Center and has been overseeing this project from start to finish. He believes that once completed, it will have a significant impact on the hospital and the community.

“This will allow us to offer more operating rooms, which will allow us to take care of our community through our trauma service. The complexity of our trauma service and our volume has increased over the years, which will allow us to perform surgeries more quickly and help patients recover more quickly and get out of the hospital,” he says.

Neurosurgeon Dr. Mike Tyler says witnessing this growth and expansion of the hospital is exciting as he has seen a lot of changes over the years and is looking forward to the future.

“I’ve been here for 36 years and I’ve seen a lot of change. This is something that’s very rewarding for me because it shows the commitment that this hospital has to the community, to the people in the community and to the medical staff to provide us with the tools that we need to take care of our community. Our community is growing,” he said.

The first phase of the expansion is expected to officially open in late July. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will commemorate the opening of the OR expansion, and the remaining two phases of the project are expected to be completed by the end of the year.