Posted on 05/12/2002 9:11:17 AM PDT by aculeus
HUNDREDS of Scottish patients have died after being forced to wait up to a year for heart surgery.
A Sunday Times survey has revealed that at least 263 patients on National Health Service waiting lists at the country’s four heart treatment centres in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen have died since 1997.
Because figures are not routinely collected, the real death toll is likely to be much higher.
Most of the deaths are believed to have been linked to the patients’ heart conditions. Most would have survived had they been treated.The findings have led to calls for an end to waiting times for heart surgery.
Last week it was revealed that at least 250,000 people in England and Wales were on hidden NHS waiting lists that the government does not publish. Many patients wait months for tests for illnesses including heart disease before they are placed on official waiting lists for surgery.
Dr Finlay Kerr, president of the Scottish Cardiac Society (SCS) and a cardiologist at Raigmore hospital in Inverness, said: “Anyone dying on the waiting list because they are waiting too long is unacceptable.
“The likelihood is that they have died from coronary disease and, had they had the intervention or surgery earlier, that may well have prevented their death.”
The Sunday Times gathered data from the four heart centres and the Scottish executive. Between April 1998 and March 2002, 135 patients died while waiting for heart bypass surgery at Glasgow’s Western and Royal infirmaries.
During the same period, 40 patients on the cardiac surgery waiting list at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary died. Between January 1997 and December 1999, the figure for the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh was 60, bringing the total to 235.
Another 28 people died in Glasgow and Aberdeen while waiting for diagnostic tests called angiograms or angioplasty, a non-surgical procedure to open up blocked arteries, in the last financial year.
In Glasgow patients are waiting up to seven months for an angiogram while the maximum wait for a bypass is almost seven months. In Edinburgh the maximum waits are five and seven months respectively.
At Aberdeen Royal Infirmary the maximum wait for an angiogram is 10 weeks and the average wait for a bypass is 18-19 weeks.
Waiting times have been reduced following concerns about waiting-list deaths. By December nobody should wait more than 36 weeks for a heart test or treatment.
Coronary heart disease is Britain’s biggest killer and Scotland’s mortality rate for the disease is the second worst in western Europe.
Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP health spokesman, said the figures were shocking and the Scottish executive should pay for more specialist staff and equipment.
“If we are seeing so many people dying as a result of delays it begs the question of how bad things are in other specialities,” she said.
A spokesman for North Glasgow University Hospitals Trust, which runs the two Glasgow heart units, said deaths on the waiting list had fallen consistently over the past few years and its waiting times were among the shortest in Britain.
A Scottish executive spokesman said reducing waiting for heart patients was a key priority.
I doubt he would have lasted a wait such as is common in Scotland.
Think of how many died on the waiting list in the other areas of the country!
Hoo! We're improving! We've got it down to 9 months. You want to be feel safe in the UK with your medical care you gotta do what I did-- marry a doctor!
But at least the crooked trial lawyers have stolen their millions.
back atcha!
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