Patients with heart ailments are now getting treatment at the Helsinki University Central Hospital and other hospitals more quickly than before. The wait for treatment sometimes stretched to several years in the early 1990s. In early December there were just fewer than 200 patients, who wait for treatment at HYKS. Today, urgent cases are treated immediately. Heart patients get treatment in 6 months in less urgent cases. However, for children and young people with heart ailments the wait for treatment remains long. According to Eero Jokinen, the head physician, the lines will decline no earlier than 2008 or 2009. It happens when a new surgery and intensive care ward opens at the Hospital for Children and Adolescents. Head physician of the HYKS Cardiology Clinic, Markku Kupari, attributes the reduction in the treatment queues and development of forms of treatment.