Young heart patients face delays in surgery
The number of children waiting between six months and a year for open heart surgery at Crumlin Hospital has risen by more than a third.
Figures from the group that arranges private treatment for long-waiting public patients show that in April last year eight children waited between six and 12 months for open heart surgery at the Dublin hospital.
The National Treatment Purchase Fund statistics show this increased to 12 in April of this year.
The number of children waiting between three and six months for this surgery also increased over the past year from 11 to 14.
The statistics follow concerns raised by Crumlin Hospital recently that a limiting factor with its heart surgery waiting list was a shortage of intensive care unit facilities. The hospital has also reported bed and theatre cutbacks over the past year.
NTPF figures also show Crumlin’s waiting times for a child to get an angiogram heart investigation – a test that blood is flowing freely in arteries – have doubled from three months to six.
Other figures show that the number of paediatric patients awaiting medical as opposed to surgical treatment for heart problems between six and 12 months at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital rose from 46 to 53 in a year.
Management at Crumlin hospital did not return calls yesterday.
The NTPF has claimed that the hospital has not fully engaged with it in the process of clearing waiting lists.
Overall, the number of paediatric patients awaiting all types of surgery at Crumlin Hospital for over three months dropped by around 8% to 781 over the past year.
The Irish Patients Association yesterday called for intensive care unit beds at our Crumlin Hospital to be prioritised for children needing heart treatment.
Chief executive, Stephen McMahon, said resources needed to be used efficiently: “This problem is not going to go away. It’s like a bottleneck, you start having a build-up on it and you can’t even buy it in with the NTPF because you don’t have the intensive care beds.
“Then, obviously, you have to look at providing extra beds for children. Otherwise, the worst case scenario that I fear is that children’s lives will be lost because of that.”
A WEXFORD family who fought “tooth and nail” over six months to get lifesaving heart surgery for their baby boy have said the lack of intensive care units are to blame for delays at Crumlin Hospital.
Jake Cloake was born with Down Syndrome and a hole in his heart.
His mother Catherine Murphy yesterday explained how her young baby’s crucial surgery was cancelled at the last moment and she feared she would have to take her son home to die.
“When he was born we were told that he had two holes in his heart and that they were optimistic that it was going to close up. Within six months, one had closed and one had grown to an enormous size for a baby. That’s when we were told that we would need surgical intervention.”
Catherine and her partner, Ken Cloake, were told there was only a small window of opportunity to carry out the surgery. This was in March last year.
Five months later, the family and little Jack were told a space in the surgery schedule was available.
But when the couple and the then 14-month-old child arrived and prepared for open heart surgery at Crumlin Hospital, they were told to go home because of a shortage of beds.
“I thought they were messing. I couldn’t comprehend that were putting a child’s life at risk. We knew that Jake was dying and that he was dying every day.
“I said to my partner Ken ‘we’re bringing him home to die’. I knew that Jake didn’t have a lot of time.”
Ms Murphy told Newstalk 106’s the Lunchtime Show that staffing issues were not to blame for delays at the hospital.
“We fought tooth and nail to get Jake done because when you’re a parent and you’re sitting in the house and your child is in a high chair and he’s not talking, he’s not moving because he’s just trying to keep himself alive, you fight for your child.”
Jake was eventually successfully operated on in October last year and his mother yesterday said was lucky to be alive.
“He’ll be two at the end of August... now he’s a different boy and it could have been done a lot sooner.”
