A SPECIALIST unit catering for patients with cystic fibrosis is expected to be up and running at Cork University Hospital (CUH) within a year to 18 months, a consultant working with those who have the disease in Munster has predicted.
Respiratory consultant Dr Barry Plant said CUH had the second-largest adult CF programme in the Republic after St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin and currently catered for 110-120 patients from the greater Munster area.
“The Pollock Report on CF services, which was published in 2005, projected that CUH would be catering for approximately 80 adults by the year 2010 and we are catering for 30 per cent more than that – we are catering not just for people from our residential area but also from adjoining counties,” he said.
“We have significant numbers from Cork and Kerry but we also offer a support service to patients in Waterford, Tipperary and Limerick and one of the strengths of CUH for people with CF in Munster is that, in addition to CF expertise, it also has the cardiothoracic units and the surgical expertise.”
Dr Plant said the CF service at CUH currently operated from two temporary rooms where all work including patient reviews, specialist CF nurse work and physiotherapy was carried out and the situation was set to intensify as CF staff postulate that patient numbers will rise to 150 by late 2010/early 2011.
However, Dr Plant said he and the other adult respiratory consultants at CUH – Dr Cathal Bredin and Dr Michael Henry – had been working closely with CUH management and had identified a possible site for a dedicated CF unit in the hospital’s soon-to-be-vacated cardiac renal centre.
The hospital is building a new cardiac renal building which is expected to be commissioned by the end of this year or the start of next year, so the space currently occupied by the existing cardiac renal unit should become vacant, he explained.
The actual conversion of the space to a dedicated CF unit including obtaining planning should take no more than four to five months as it will involve simply reconfiguring the existing space rather than having to carry out any major new build construction work, he said.
The unit will include five individual isolation rooms dedicated solely for CF patients, a dedicated gym for CF patients as exercise prescription is vital to healthy adults with CF, as well as an office area and a multidisciplinary team room for discussion of patients and education sessions for patients.
Dr Plant said 25 per cent of adult CF patients get diabetes so a diabetes day care centre would be located nearby. CF patients also get osteoporosis as they get older so there would also be space allocated for the hospital’s rheumatology department, he said.
CF constitutes a huge component of the work carried out by Dr Bredin, Dr Henry and himself, accounting for more than 25 per cent of their work and he paid tribute to the HSE for a significant expansion of CF services including the provision of two full-time nurses and a full-time physiotherapist.
Dr Plant said the National Registry of Cystic Fibrosis shows that 56 per cent of all patients are now adult, ie over 16, and as CF patients get older, they suffer more complications and require more aggressive therapy.
CUH general manager Tony McNamara confirmed to The Irish Times that the conversion work on the new unit was expected to cost just under €1 million with some €500,000 coming from the Cystic Fibrosis Association of Ireland.
Dr Plant also paid tribute to the Cystic Fibrosis Association of Ireland and the local Cork and Kerry support group, Build4 Life, which has been fundraising for years for a dedicated CF treatment unit at CUH for its support and assistance.