Efforts to reduce a surgical backlog at Cape Town’s Karl Bremer Hospital are paying off, and despite challenges like extremely high patient numbers, particularly in its emergency department and psychiatric ward, medical teams have been able to perform an extra 328 surgical procedures since August last year.
Clinical services had been pivoted during the pandemic to cope with the surge in Covid patients requiring hospitalisation, reports EWN, and acting medical manager Dr Sue le Roux said this caused a massive backlog in the number of patients scheduled for elective surgical procedures.
“However, to date, in less than a year, more than 300 patients have had much-needed surgery over and above the normal lists we operate on every week, which has had a huge impact on the community and is something of which we are very proud.”
Le Roux said the hospital team created an additional three surgical lists which served general surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology and orthopaedic surgery.
“Patients who have been operated on since August last year were not just those needing acute surgery but others who would otherwise have had long waits for their procedures…the times that they waited from the point of the emergency until theatre was available was dramatically shortened.”
Health bosses said that a reduction in funding for the province from national government – some R1.5bn – would amplify pressures already felt in the sector.
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