Children 'at risk of blindness' because of cancelled operations

CHILDREN ARE at risk of blindness because operating lists at Temple Street hospital in Dublin have been cancelled, a surgeon at the hospital said yesterday.

Prof Michael O’Keeffe, consultant ophthalmic surgeon at Children’s University Hospital, Temple Street, said one of his surgery lists was cancelled because of a shortage of anaesthetists.

Nine children were to be operated on, he said, including a six-week-old baby who needed cataract treatment. “It is a critical period of visual development,” he said.

Surgery had also been cancelled for children with glaucoma, a progressive condition that damages the optic nerve and can lead to blindness.

Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Pat Kenny programme, Prof O’Keeffe said some conditions had to be treated within a certain timeframe. “If you don’t do them in that timeframe the results are poorer and there is a possibility these children could go blind as a result,” he said.

The doctor said he was also listed to carry out complicated cases including surgery on patients with tumours of the eye.

“They have to be treated at a certain stage and they will be pushed back further the following week and it all backs up into chaos,” he said.

Prof O’Keeffe, who has worked at the hospital since 1986, said the problem within anaesthesia had been brought to the attention of management early in the year.

“It took until the end of June for the management to realise there is a crisis here,” he said.

He said it was not only his list that was being affected; many other surgeons had cancellations also, but were not speaking up because they were worried they would be intimidated.

He had received an “indirect threat” that he would be brought before the board of management of the hospital if he spoke out.

In a statement yesterday, chief executive of the hospital Paul Cunniffe said that, due to a temporary shortage of consultant anaesthetic staff, the hospital had to reduce its elective theatre activity in the interests of patients’ safety.

He said the need for additional consultant anaesthetists was identified late last year and while the recruitment process had begun immediately, the hospital had experienced difficulties due a national shortage of paediatric anaesthetists.

“An interim solution has been put in place with additional anaesthetic support from external sources which have already started to come to fruition,” he said.

He said any patients whose surgery was cancelled were being prioritised for a new admission date as soon as possible. “The hospital acknowledges and apologises for the distress and inconvenience these cancellations have caused.”