Long wait for urgent surgery

It has been a distressing few months for Bondi 61-year-old heart surgery patient Ray Stanborough. On five separate occasions he has been scheduled for heart valve replacement surgery at St Vincent’s Hospital, and each time the hospital has been forced to cancel.

“I can feel myself getting worse all the time,” he said. “They told me that my valve is hardly working at all.”

Mr Stanborough’s surgery was originally booked in for May 4, but was cancelled due to a lack of Intensive Care Unit beds needed for post-operative care. Since then his surgery has been rescheduled and cancelled a further four times through May and June.

“It all relates to funding,” he said. “Transplants come in, so they have to cancel me. They can only do so many operations at a time.

“I must stress that I’m very happy with the hospital. But their arms are tied, they can only do so much.”

St Vincent’s Hospital spokesperson David Faktor said Mr Stanborough’s story was not an uncommon one.

“Having the surgery cancelled is very distressing, and we certainly feel for him,” Mr Faktor said.

He added that Mr Stanborough was a “victim of circumstance” – on at least two occasions, the surgery was cancelled in favour of more urgent transplant surgery as donor organs suddenly became available.

“It is a bittersweet situation,” Mr Faktor said. “Our heart goes out to him but our priority is to ensure that we are making clinically appropriate decisions each time.

“We don’t have as many ICU beds as we would like but it is the nature of what we do. If we had 50 ICU beds, these problems wouldn’t happen, but we also can’t afford to have those beds empty either.”

As the Cardiopulmonary Transplant Centre for NSW, St Vincent’s Hospital has seen a recent spike in cancellations of this type with the federal government’s recent successful promotion of the Australian Organ Donor Register. Transplant surgeries must be prioritised over other urgent operations.

Opposition spokesperson on health, Jillian Skinner, sees Mr Stanborough’s situation as avoidable. Despite receiving additional federal government funding, the number of surgeries completed in NSW has actually fallen.

“Ray Stanborough has suffered needlessly for days because there were not enough beds or theatres,” Ms Skinner said.

Mr Stanborough’s surgery has been rescheduled for July 6.

– By Hamish Boland-Rudder