NEARLY 1,000 operations have had to be cancelled at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin, Dublin, in the first six months of this year, new figures show.
The data, provided by the hospital, also reveals that at least two heart operations were cancelled every week at the State’s largest children’s hospital between January and June. A quarter of the heart operations cancelled were postponed due to the unavailability of an intensive care bed.
These cancellations at Crumlin were not included in figures supplied by the Health Service Executive to Fine Gael last month when it sought details of numbers of operations cancelled at hospitals in the first six months of 2009.
That data, which showed nearly 9,000 operations had been cancelled over the period, referred mainly to adult hospitals. The Crumlin cancellations bring the overall figure for cancellations in the first half of 2009 closer to 10,000.
Our Lady's Children's Hospital told The Irish Timesthat 983 theatre operations were cancelled at the hospital from January to June. "Of the 983 theatre operation cancellations, 59 related to cardio thoracic, of which 15 were due to the unavailability of an ICU bed."
However, it said the majority of these patients awaiting heart surgery when it was cancelled were rescheduled and had their operations within a short time frame.
Last month Dr Paul Oslizlok, a consultant paediatric cardiologist at the hospital, said a shortage of intensive care beds at Crumlin meant children’s heart operations were being cancelled weekly.
Referring to the case of a Limerick toddler who died after being sent home from the hospital in 2003 when her heart operation was postponed due to a shortage of intensive care nurses, he added: “We have got another potential Róisín Ruddle on our doorsteps if we don’t act now. We are very worried really.”
Fine Gael’s health spokesman Dr James Reilly said if the hospital was saying the “majority” of heart operations cancelled were rescheduled within a short time frame, it meant a minority were not. He said children needed their operations as scheduled because they were growing and their conditions could deteriorate rapidly.
The Government had tried to distract from these very real problems at Crumlin – which also had to close a 25-bed ward and a theatre in May to cut costs – by talking about plans for a new national children’s hospital by 2014 which, Dr Reilly said, was “unrealistically based” on €350 million in charitable donations. The rest of the money for the €750 million hospital will come from the exchequer.
The HSE says it is working with Crumlin hospital to provide additional intensive care beds, which will be ready in 18 months.
HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm told an Oireachtas health committee meeting two weeks ago that the figure of 9,000 operations then known to have been cancelled been January and June was “relatively low” when compared with the amount of work actually done every day in hospitals across the country.