Patients bent over with severe spinal conditions are waiting two years or more for surgery, the HSE West Regional Health Forum meeting has heard.
One such patient with scoliosis, a condition which causes abnormal curvature of the spine, was told that a lack of funding was behind a delay of at least two years before an elective surgery could be carried out, Independent Councillor Catherine Connolly revealed.
In answer to her questions tabled to the HSE, it was revealed there were 816 people on the inpatient waiting list for orthopaedics – 43 of them waiting 18 months or more. There were 4,627 languishing on the outpatient waiting list – 780 of them for at least a year-and-a-half.
While other patients on waiting lists were getting called to private hospitals for appointments – which would be paid for by the HSE – spinal surgery cannot be carried out privately as there was a lack of spinal surgeons, Cllr Connoly said.
“The waiting lists for orthopaedic surgery are truly shocking. How can you stand over it? It’s two years for an MRI and two years for spinal surgery,” she complained.
The Chief Operating Officer for the Saolta group hospitals, Ann Cosgrove, said there were lengthy waiting lists locally and nationally.
For more on this story, see this week’s Galway City Tribune
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