Surgery delays add to the pain
Jessica Collingwood vomits from pain most mornings.
She has endometriosis and after six years of suffering was booked in for surgery today at North Shore Hospital.
Now she is one of thousands who have had their elective surgery delayed to prepare for an influx of coronavirus patients.
While she understands the reasoning behind alert level four, the 20-year-old says she makes the choice daily to suffer from intense pain or feel tired from pain relief medication. ‘‘A lot of us want to get back to normal life.’’
Covid-19 is adding pressure on the country’s health system and exacerbating issues around this overlooked gynaecological disease, which affects one in 10 Kiwi women and girls. Delays in diagnosing endometriosis were common before the outbreak.
And endometriosis surgery was likely to be ‘‘bumped well down the list’’ when restrictions were lifted, Endometriosis New Zealand chief executive Deborah Bush said. ‘‘It is rarely seen as a priority.’’
Director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield has previously said he did not know how many elective surgeries had been cancelled because of Covid-19 but he expected the number to run into the thousands.
Around 280,000 people needed an elective surgery – defined as healthcare provided more than 24 hours after a decision to proceed with treatment – before the outbreak of Covid-19. Wait times had increased since 2013 and were up to 304 days.
And clearing the ‘‘massive bulge’’ of delayed elective surgeries once restrictions were lifted would prove a challenge, said Sarah Dalton, executive director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists.
‘‘How we manage that could create some pressure points.’’
District health boards (DHBs) will focus on a patient’s clinical priority when choosing what elective surgeries will go ahead, a Ministry of Health spokesman said. This would be balanced alongside infection control needs.
Bush expected endometriosis surgery delays to be felt well into next year.
But Collingwood’s quality of life is drastically affected now.
Capital & Coast, Hutt Valley, and Wairarapa DHB incident controller Joy Farley said it was too soon to go into detail about planning to meet elective surgery demand. ‘‘As alert levels change, we will consider the implications on our services and determine if or how we can then possibly increase the level of elective surgery we undertake.’’