‘Patients will be sent abroad unless epilepsy units open’

One of the country’s foremost experts on epilepsy has warned he is unable to look after his patients properly, and will be forced to send them abroad for treatment unless two units needed to monitor seizures are opened.

Consultant neurologist and director of the epilepsy programme at Beaumont Hospital, Professor Norman Delanty, said it was unacceptable that close to 200 patients, some of whom are at risk of death, are unable to access a vital service.

This is because the HSE ban on recruitment means a new two-bed unit at Cork University Hospital, and a four-bed unit at Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital, re-furbished at a cost of almost €1m, cannot be staffed.

“I am currently unable to carry out my job to adequately treat these patients,” Prof Delanty said.

“This situation is unacceptable. If the unit is not open very soon then these patients will have to be referred abroad for treatment.

“This also has obvious cost implications for the State.”

One patient who recently tried unsuccessfully to get HSE funding for treatment abroad, Gráinne O’Connor, 27, from Shanagarry, Co Cork, was advised to “seek access to the appropriate services at Beaumont”.

Prof Delanty said this was “crazy” advice, given the Beaumont service remains closed.

“It shows one arm of the HSE does not know what the other arm is doing,” he said.

Prof Delanty, who was part of the HSE’s clinical advisory group when it was drawing up its national epilepsy care programme, said the service could easily be provided at the unopened state-of-the-art units in Cork and Dublin.

The neurologist said it was “completely inappropriate” to send people abroad.

Billy Kelleher, Fianna Fáil’s health spokesman, said he intended to raise the issue in the Dáil.

“You can’t keep units closed because of a lack of frontline personnel. It’s a crucial service,” said Mr Kelleher.

“The HSE action shows the disconnect between management and what is required for patients.”

Prof Delanty said the monitoring units were essential for the management of patients with difficult-to-control seizures who are undergoing evaluation for possible life-changing epilepsy brain surgery, and also for patients where there is doubt about the under-lying diagnosis of epilepsy.

He said many of these patients would be “frequent attenders” at emergency departments, have poor quality of life, and have ongoing increased risk of serious injury and death.

There are 186 patients on a waiting list at Beaumont Hospital. Brainwave, the Irish Epilepsy Association, estimates up to 250 people are in need of monitoring. Epilepsy kills about 130 people in Ireland each year.