To wonder why medical procedures have been cancelled?

[malificent7]

Apparently the fairly big hospital where i finished my last placement is quiet.
A and e is dead apparently according to colleagues. So why are operations and cancer treatment cancelled?
I dont think icu is overrun with corona victims but i may be wrong.

Erm. ICU (in fact the whole hospital) has been full of overrun with COVID for the past 5 weeks and sadly, if people with cancer get the virus there is a much higher risk of them dying from it. We are just seeing the end of the first peak so you will now see hospitals starting to reintroduce other urgent work (including cancer treatment) and trying to create COVID-free areas to protect the most vulnerable - because the virus isn’t going away.

Not all operations and cancer treatments have been called off, but the risk/benefit balance has spchanged significantly. Some have been rescheduled or moved to cleaner sites.

As the NHS moves to be able to live with high capacityfor infectious diseases, other services can resume more widely, as they will be able to plan facilities into 'hot' and not. It's been really good that th public response flattened the curve quickly, and hopefully future curves can also be flattened. That will make possibe to arrange safe treatment for other conditions

Life saving procedures, and those to avert major lifechanging consequences are still being carried out. As are most courses of treatment that are already underway, especially those which can be carried out under new safety regimes

A&E being quieter than usual also reflects public of coming to hospitals in case of infection or they don't want to overwhelm the system.

There's also a matter of staff being redeployed and wards being reconfigured to cope with the expected Covid surge - another reason why many procedures were postponed / cancelled

Should read "public's fear"

Our local hospital is not overrun with covid patients. Icu and hdu are nowhere near capacity. Stuff was cancelled because we thought it would be over run, because we wanted to avoid people unnecessarily travelling etc. Now we're working out how to start business as usual safely.

Brother in law got his cancer treatment as arranged. Said his local large hospital was very quiet. Another family member had emergency orthopaedic op and follow up appts went ahead. Other folk have had non essential appts cancelled. Maybe depends where you live.

The hospital I work in has been quiet on the covid front for two weeks now, and we never hit the predicted levels of surge, although other regions were hit much harder.

We stopped doing elective activity in mid march and cancer work a week later for two reasons. We needed to redeploy the staff and train them to support critical care. We needed to free up the theatre area to make additional ITU space. Pulling the plug on the services was quick to do, putting everything back together again will take much longer.

ImFreeToDoWhatIWant absolutely no need for that comment.

My local hospital isn’t doing outpatient treatment so I was referred to the local private hospital for my LLETZ procedure earlier this week. Maybe similar options are being explored at other trusts?

Even in the unlikely even your hospital isn’t overrun with Corvid patients it has the capacity to be so with minimal notice. They could have 10 patients today with it needing icu. Pretty much any operation has the opportunity for something to go wrong and icu be needed. I’ve seen a young woman have a cardiac arrest on the table for a routine gynae laparoscopic procedure. So it would be unethical to risk it.

Plus a lot of patients would not want to be in hospital right now. I’m waiting for a very much needed orthopedic operation, expected to be day case and would sort out the immense pain I’m in. If they rang me up and said come in tomorrow I’d be rather worried.

My trust is now trying to plan to reintroduce as much as possible now covid numbers have decreased. But it's not just as easy as opening the doors again. Social distancing in hospital will be challenging. But also keeping people safe and getting them treatment is important. I work in the NHS because I actually care and want people well
However we have to do protect everyone and keep Covid low if we can. It's going to be challenging.

Please note huge changes were acted on very quickly back in March: Extra beds found, areas changed, staffing moved within days to prepare for this. No one knew how bad it was going to get and it would of been unsafe to keep bringing people in for risk of infection to all.

I was very proud of how my trust did all this please don't think the planning to get people back in isn't happening and we are all just twiddling our thumbs having a rest because it's not the case.

My hospital is quiet but only because all the operations have been cancelled! Because of that we can attempt to social distance a bit more. If it was packed as usual we would have no chance and the virus, which is already all over the hospital would spread far more easily! X

It had already been thought that different areas would see their pick at different times. It might still be the case that some are still to see theirs. Hospitals have to prepare for this. That means shifting doctors nurses and hcas in new areas, training the staff, transforming wards that would have been used for post surgery before. All this takes time.

Many if not most places still carry out urgent and cancer treatment although this could be in a different hospital dedicated to cancer treatment only.

Likewise here our local has apparently seen next to no Covid. It has been a big problem in some parts of the country but virtually non existent in others.

If you've been on placement as you say that suggests some sort of training, it's a bit strange you don't realise it's for patients safety because of the virus. There's been too much NHS bashing threads recently here on MN so I hope that is not your agenda to.

Some places are overrun with covid. Others most definitely are not.

However lots of staff were pulled to help with covid just in case leaving gaps elsewhere.

The government has clearly says they are looking at this and are trying to resume normal services.

Really? You can't possibly imagine why? And you've just finished a placement somewhere, so would have some limited medical knowledge?

No one knew how bad this was going to be. Would it have been better to cancel nothing and carry on as normal, when the hospitals absolutely wouldn't have been able to cope? And there more than likely would have been more deaths than there already are?

I think it's a reasonable question thought. If they can pivot to provide corona services why can't they pivot back to normal?

Preservation of resource. A number of routine ops or procedures can require hdu or icu input. Theatres require anesthetist who are also required in ITU. Nurses from recovery / theatres in many places have been redeployed to support ITU nursing teams. If we continue to do routine ops, we risk extending pressures on our much needed services. Locally I understand it is being looked into what can safely be restarted which is really positive.

I think there are some people on here who just rejoice when they see an opportunity to snipe at someone.
I think how busy your local hospitals are depends on where you live. Ours are not particularly busy now, but this may change, no one knows.
I wish they had selected some hospitals to be just covid hospitals and kept the others just for routine stuff (especially vital cancer treatment). We have got 2 large major hospitals within 50 miles, but they both treat covid patients, as does every other private and 'cottage' hospital within the county. I don't know how easy it would have been to keep a hospital free of the virus - it would probably have neeed more widespread testing at an earlier time, the lack of which is the fault of the government.

Someone shared this and it proves quite apt for where we are currently at.

We wouldn’t have coped without cancelling operations and appointments. We have moved heaven and earth to create beds for COVID patients and more ITU capacity and thank god we did. We prepared for the worst, dealt with something awful and now are preparing for what will come when lockdown lifts. Whilst being exhausted and a bit broken by what we have all experienced.

Does anyone know why routine bowel cancer screening has been stopped/postponed until further notice? I mean the test they send you through the post and you post back (for over 60s i think). That part doesn’t involve any physical contact between humans So is it that the tests are analysed by the same labs that are doing the coronavirus testing so there is no capacity? Or is there a fear of infectivity?

(If the former, that suggests screening may not be reinstated for some time as the target is still 250k coronavirus tests a day)

My understanding re bowel screening is that its due to next step after positive bowel screening is a colonoscopy / endoscopy which is limited currently.