Round-the-clock ops and retired surgeons to tackle NHS queues

MEDICAL experts say the “timebomb” of postponed and cancelled NHS surgeries caused by the pandemic has finally exploded – and there are few options left.

Among them are performing operations in the evening and at night, and keeping on the retired medics that were brought back to help with coronavirus cases.

The President of the Royal College of Surgeons, Professor Neil Mortensen, said there had been concerns over suspending elective surgery since the start of lockdown.

He said it had placed a timebomb under what was already a crisis in NHS waiting times.

He added: “That timebomb has now detonated with the numbers of those waiting more than a year for treatment spiralling out of control.”

Official figures show the number of patients having to wait more than a year to start treatment in England jumped to its highest monthly figure in a decade in May.

It leapt from 1,032 for the same month last year to a staggering 26,029.

Many people – including those needing knee and hip replacements – could now face an agonising wait of up to two years for surgery.

Meanwhile analysis by the British Medical Association (BMA) 1.5 million operations and 20,000 cancer treatments were called off in the three months from the start of April.

More than 2.5 million first-time outpatient appointments were also cancelled.

BMA chairman Dr Chaand Nagpaul said the NHS had “a huge mountain” to climb to get back to routine care.

He urged the Government to be open with the public about the true scale of the damage and wants proper plans drawn up to deal with the backlog. He said: “This is the real – but so far hidden – impact of the Covid crisis. Patient safety is being severely compromised not just by the virus but by the knockon effects of an unprecedented disruption to NHS services.”

Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at the King’s Fund health think-tank, said one option was to arrange more elective procedures out of hours. He added that temporary staff who were brought in during the pandemic could be kept on to share the burden. Meanwhile conshows sultant anaesthetist Dr Helgi Johannsson, 48, warned that “draconian” quarantine rules were prompting patients to postpone elective operations themselves.

The London-based doctor said the fact patients and their families must isolate for two weeks before routine ops is deterring them.

He said: “We cannot put our patients at risk by making their access to healthcare so difficult that they have to choose between having their operation and allowing their children to go to school.”

He told of one of his own friends who was “hobbling around in pain” but was reluctant to go ahead with a hip replacement because of the implication for her daughter’s schooling.

He said postponing relatively common procedures – like hip replacements, hernia repairs or gall bladder removals – could store up “severe and even life-threatening” health problems for the future.

Hernias could become strangulated while gall bladder disease could cause pancreatitis and even death. For cancer cases, a Change. Org petition calling for urgent Government action to prevent the deaths of up to 35,000 patients as a result of disruptions to treatment has hit 130,000 signatures.

Victims include a 31-year-old beautician called Kelly, from Macclesfield, Cheshire, who died last month after her chemotherapy for stage four bowel cancer was postponed in March.

Professor Pat Price, chairman of Action Radiotherapy and founder of the Radiotherapy4Life campaign, said: “We have to get cancer services up and running much quicker than the end of the year.”

A Department of Health spokesman said the NHS had continued to treat cancer patients as a priority, with urgent and essential tests and treatments going ahead in a safe way for thousands of patients.

He added: “We are supporting the NHS to begin safely restoring urgent and non-urgent services and have committed to providing the funding the NHS needs to respond to the coronavirus outbreak.

“On top of this, we are already providing the NHS with a record cash funding boost of £33.9billion extra by 2023-24.”