Children’s clinic under huge pressure

A clinic treating children for orthopaedic conditions such as congenital hip dysplasia (dislocation) and club foot is seeing up to 70 patients a day, even though the ideal number is 24, according to the surgeon involved.

Colm Taylor, orthopaedic surgeon at South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital (SIVUH), said they were seeing “well in excess of what would be recommended for clinic numbers” in an effort to try and clear the backlog of paediatric patients.

The problem was not confined to Cork, Mr Taylor said, orthopaedic surgeons specialising in paediatric orthopaedics were thin on the ground nationally.

“There is no one in Waterford, one in Limerick who is close to retirement, and one person in Galway.”

He said the HSE “at least had the sense to appoint two of us in Cork”.

However, the two surgeons appointed in Cork — Mr Taylor and his colleague Sinéad Boran — only took up their posts in 2012, six years after the only paediatric orthopaedic surgeon in the HSE South was forced to retire on health grounds.

In the intervening six years, four orthopaedic surgeons from Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin travelled to Cork on a weekly rotational basis to provide outpatient clinics. Children in need of surgery had to travel to Dublin.

The need to travel has now ceased, with the exception of very complex orthopaedic cases, since Mr Taylor and Ms Boran took up their posts. The legacy, however, of the longtime lack of resources in the HSE South, is that clinics remain swamped.

Additionally, SIVUH has taken over all orthopaedic work from the now closed St Mary’s Orthopaedic Hospital in Gurranabraher. Ger O’Callaghan, chief executive of SIVUH said: “What we inherited from St Mary’s was quite a problem, there were huge lists up there.”

The good news though was that the majority of children no longer had to travel to Dublin for treatment. In fact today marks a collaborative milestone between SIVUH, Crumlin, and Straight Ahead, a charity set up to provide free surgery for children in need of urgent operations for severe orthopaedic deformities. Mr Taylor, Ms Boran, and Crumlin orthopaedic surgeon Pat Kiely will perform SIVUH’s first Straight Ahead-funded surgery on a paediatric patient from Cork. The surgeons will give their time free of charge and Mr Taylor said they are hoping the collaboration will continue into the future.