Top Cork surgeon warns funding pledge for children's surgeries must not be 'pipe dream'

Orthopaedic surgeon Pat Kiely: 'It is no doubt true that we got knocked back by Covid, that really clobbered us and we are not where we need to be at.'

The pandemic “absolutely hammered” waiting lists for children’s surgery, meaning recently announced funding plans can not be "a pipe dream", a leading Cork surgeon has urged.

March figures for spinal surgeries show 163 waiting for spinal fusion and 96 for other spinal surgeries. There have been 86 of these procedures done this year.

Pat Kiely, who works in CHI at Crumlin, South Infirmary-Victoria University Hospital, Cork University Hospital and with Enable Ireland, said the pandemic’s negative impact came just as long waiting lists were being tackled.

“I think we have to understand we had a tough time for 10 years maybe up to 2019,” he said. 

The lists were so long charity Straight Ahead, which he co-founded, has fundraised for 160 procedures so far. 

Then Covid came, and all of that chance to stay nearly on top of things got absolutely hammered.” 

As elective surgeries were mostly cancelled, families faced extra anxieties.

“Parents and families get anxious as well if all the talk is on waiting lists. It is no doubt true that we got knocked back by Covid, that really clobbered us and we are not where we need to be at,” he said.

“But overall, we are in a better place now than we were, and we are hopefully on the road to a better future. That is my perspective.” 

His concern is plans for €19m to revitalise children’s surgical care could fall by the wayside, as has happened previously.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, for example, pledged no child should wait longer than four months by year’s end for scoliosis operations. This promise was also made in 2017 by then health minister Simon Harris.

“It almost seems sometimes these are pipe dreams rather than reality, and that is, I guess, what we would wish for — that they become reality,” Mr Kiely said.

“An awful lot of time and effort and energy has gone into looking at numbers, looking at workforces and arranging what we know our country would need.”
He said increasing links between the under-construction children’s hospital and Cork can only benefit families.

The mother of a Galway teenager who benefited from surgery at Crumlin during the pandemic said her daughter has “freedom” now she never expected.

“She was a year and a half on the emergency list, got the surgery probably about four years later than it should have been done. She grew 4.2 inches overnight with that surgery,” said Marie Roughan Coppinger of her daughter Moya (17).

Moya has a rare physical disability, hypomyelinating hereditary motor and sensory neuropathy, and also developed scoliosis.

Recovery from the 12-hour surgery involved intense physiotherapy, and at one point there was talk of using a motorised wheelchair.

“Purely down to her complete and utter determination, she walked into school last September with her dog,” her mother said.