{"id":64222,"date":"2020-07-23T12:49:27","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T16:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/?p=64222"},"modified":"2020-07-23T12:49:27","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T16:49:27","slug":"ontario-hospitals-strive-to-clear-surgery-backlog-as-patients-remain-in-limbo-due-to-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/canada\/ontario-hospitals-strive-to-clear-surgery-backlog-as-patients-remain-in-limbo-due-to-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario hospitals strive to clear surgery backlog as patients remain in limbo due to COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Ontario
A patient is readied for surgery at North York General Hospital on May 26, 2020. Almost every aspect of working in a hospital, including surgery, has been affected by COVID-19. (Evan Mitsui\/CBC)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After hospitals across Ontario cancelled or postponed thousands of elective surgeries to free up space amid the COVID-19 pandemic, officials are now facing a new challenge: Tackling a massive backlog of surgical procedures while anxious patients remain in limbo.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As CBC News previously reported, an estimated 100,000 or so patients across Canada \u2014 including many in Ontario \u2014 had their surgeries delayed earlier this year.<\/p>\n

<\/section>\n

While those procedures are now resuming, some warn it could take months, or even several years, to clear the backlog ranging from cataract\u00a0to cancer surgeries.<\/p>\n

“People are waiting in pain, people are waiting in uncertainty,” said Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, a public health-care advocacy group.<\/p>\n

“Some people’s health declines while they’re waiting.”<\/p>\n

That was the situation for Janina Lebon, whose vision started getting blurry last year. That summer, she learned she had cataracts, and was slowly losing her ability to do basic activities like read or drive.<\/p>\n

The 75-year-old resident of Hamilton, Ont. was slotted in for a first eye surgery in March, with the procedure for her second eye booked for April. Then, amid the pandemic, both were pushed back for months.<\/p>\n

“Mine is an eye problem, but if you’ve got cancer, or like my neighbour up the street who needed a knee replacement \u2014 we want it done. We don’t like waiting,” she said.<\/p>\n

Lebon finally had her first operation\u00a0at the end of June, meaning she waited roughly a year for the procedure, and is still waiting for her second surgery in August.<\/p>\n

Millions of surgeries cancelled worldwide<\/h2>\n

According to Western University researcher Janet Martin, many Canadians could be waiting far longer than that, given the high number of postponed procedures.<\/p>\n

“It would take a long time \u2014 years \u2014 to catch up on that backlog,” she warned.<\/p>\n

Early on in the pandemic, Martin worked with the global CovidSurg Collaborative research team to figure out the long-term impact of the pandemic on surgeries.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Janet
Janet Martin, an associate professor at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University, is among a team of global researchers who have looked at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on surgery cancellations. (Western University)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The team estimated that more than 28 million elective surgeries worldwide could be cancelled or postponed in 2020, based on a 12-week period of peak disruption to hospital services due to COVID-19 \u2014 including potentially hundreds of thousands of procedures in Canada.<\/p>\n

Even if the number of surgeries performed each week is increased by 20 per cent compared to pre-pandemic activity, it could take close to a year to clear that backlog, the team found.<\/p>\n

Hitting that kind of ambitious target would be challenging, said Martin, who is also a professor of\u00a0anesthesia and perioperative medicine\u00a0at\u00a0the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.<\/p>\n

“In Canada, we’re already working at or beyond capacity in many ways,” she said.<\/p>\n

Hospitals aim to boost capacity<\/h2>\n

That means hospital officials may have to be creative\u00a0and beef up staffing to handle the load.<\/p>\n

At Trillium Health Partners, which operates three GTA hospital sites \u00a0\u2014 Credit Valley Hospital, Mississauga Hospital and the Queensway Health Centre in Etobicoke \u2014 the organization’s CEO, Michelle DiEmanuele, said plans are in motion to do just that.<\/p>\n

“That could involve working on weekends, adding an extra hour shift to a surgical block of time. It could mean sharing hospital capacity among our hospital system,” she said in response to a question from CBC News on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

On a broader level, Premier Doug Ford vowed to ensure hospitals have the resources to get the backlog “cleaned up as quickly as possible.”<\/p>\n

\n

“This won’t be easy,” added DiEmanuele. “This will take a team approach, a system approach, and innovation in health care.”<\/p>\n

Despite the ongoing challenges, and the frustration and fear felt by anxious patients, Martin said the initial cancellations were the right approach, as her team’s research throughout the pandemic recently found COVID-positive patients undergoing surgery face disproportionately high mortality rates.<\/p>\n

“Surgery plus COVID is a very, very fragile situation,” she said.<\/p>\n

CBC<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  After hospitals across Ontario cancelled or postponed thousands of elective surgeries to free up space amid the COVID-19 pandemic, officials are now facing a new challenge: Tackling a massive …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":64224,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3539],"tags":[15842,5160,10254],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Ontario-hospitals-strive-to-clear-surgery-backlog-as-patients-remain-in-limbo-due-to-COVID-19-Milenio-Stadium-Canada.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}