HSE may fund gastric band surgery abroad

Patients waiting for potentially life-saving gastric band surgery look set to have it done in Britain under a HSE scheme for treatment abroad.

However, the cost to the taxpayer of having the surgery carried out there could be up to €3,000 more expensive.

The news comes just weeksafter the HSE informed the bariatric (weight loss surgery) services in St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin, where Dr Donal O’Shea is the lead consultant, that it had used its allocated funding for this year.