Painful wait for patients
DESPITE East London’s Frere Hospital having reopened its arthroplasty unit at the beginning of last year after having been closed for nearly three years, the unit is still battling with a patient backlog.
The unit was closed for a number of reasons, despite a backlog of 186 patients.
Arthroplasty is an operation performed to replace an arthritic or dysfunctional joint surface.
Hospital CEO Dr Rolene Wagner had previously said the infection of patients’ wounds due to a lack of infrastructure was one of the reasons behind the unit’s closure.
“The operation can alleviate pain, restore function or correct a developmental or hereditary joint defect,” Wagner said.
Patients complained to the office of the provincial health MEC, Wagner, as well as investigative news programme, Carte Blanche.
Yesterday Wagner said some of the patients had waited over 10 years for an arthroplasty to relieve their pain.
“The plight of patients on the waiting list evoked great sympathy and mobilised civic demand for this service to be provided,” she said. Wagner said other reasons behind the closure, had included a lack of sufficient medical and nursing staff. She said the 10bed unit had been developed by converting 12 trauma beds and by upgrading the infrastructure to meet the needs of the unit.
The overhaul was completed in October 2013. New nurses were added to the team and training took place while an orthopaedic surgeon was also hired.
In January last year, the unit opened to assess patients on the waiting list and the first 50 were selected.
“The number of arthroplasties that could be done was constrained by the available budget,” said Wagner.
The unit operated on 10 patients per month on two Sundays each month. There were also constraints related to theatre availability as orthopaedic theatres were not up to standard, Wagner said. The hospital is currently busy with the construction of a new orthopaedic theatre complex comprising four theatres to be completed next March. —