More than 100,000 operations 'cancelled in one year'

More than 100,000 operations were cancelled at English hospitals last year, according to figures revealed yesterday.

This was almost twice the number officially reported by the Department of Health.

More than 7,000 patients had operations cancelled more than once for non-clinical reasons, according to data collated by the Tories. 

Health executives blamed patients' missing medical notes, bed shortages, staff absences and equipment failures.

NHS critics said the cancellations were an example of the 'increasingly cavalier' standards of treatment for patients.

Critics have blamed Government targets and claimed trusts have postponed a range of routine procedures in an attempt to tackle their debts.

The scale of the cancellations was revealed by Freedom of Information data from 124 NHS trusts  -  77 per cent -  although some trusts are now disputing the numbers.

Shadow health spokesman Andrew Lansley said: 'NHS staff are doing the best they can, but how can they plan patients' care properly when they are continually hampered by Labour's topdown targets?'

LibDem health spokesman Norman Lamb said the figures are 'another sign of the unsustainable pressure the NHS is under'.

The data showed 77,302 operations in total were cancelled for non-clinical reasons at the 124 trusts in 2007-2008.

If this figure was extrapolated across all 171 trusts in England, it would give a total of about 105,000 operations.

This is far higher than the official figure, which only counts operations cancelled 24 hours before surgery is due. According to the Department of Health,57,350 surgical procedures were scrapped in 2007-2008  -  up 14 per cent from the 50,505 cancelled when Labour came to power.

Kingston Hospital in Surrey cancelled the most operations, with 10,351. The trust also had the highest number of patients whose surgery was cancelled more than once  -  2,071.

It was followed by York Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in North Yorkshire, which cancelled 7,236 operations. More than 1,300 patients had their surgery postponed at least twice.

Other poor performers included Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (3,652 operations cancelled), Bedford Hospitals (3,047) and Dartford & Gravesham NHS Trust in Kent (2,587).

One patient had an operation cancelled by Plymouth Hospitals nine times. A patient at Kingston was let down eight times and one at York had surgery postponed six times.

Around a third of trusts cancelled an operation for the same patient three times or more.

Of the 77,302 operations cancelled for non-clinical reasons, 10,714 cases related to bed shortages and 16,614 were due to problems with the operating theatre.

Nearly 4,000 were axed because of problems with equipment, and 11,370 related to staff shortages.

Last night there was a mounting dispute over the statistics. Several trusts claimed they had supplied the wrong data to the Tories or accused them of manipulating the figures.

London's Great Ormond Street Hospital said it cancelled only 113 operations, not the 3,590 it had published under the FOI request.

Executives at Kingston Hospital said its figure should have been 190 instead of 10,351.

Michael Wilson, chief operating officer for Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals, said the figures were 'not fairly presented' as 'over 600 of the operations that were "cancelled" were in fact brought forward'.

However, a Tory source said each NHS trust had been asked for the number of cancelled operations, and the reasons for them.

'We have asked straight questions and published the figures according to the answers we were given,' said the insider.

Case study

Lily Cater's life-saving heart surgery was cancelled seven times.

The two-year-old's parents were repeatedly told to prepare her for the operation, only to be halted at the last minute because of a shortage of intensive care beds.

On the eighth attempt, Lily's operation went ahead and she made a full recovery.

Lily - pictured with her mother Michala - was born with pulmonary atresia, a heart condition also known as 'blue baby syndrome'.

Blood was unable to flow from part of the heart to the lungs and the oxygen level in her blood was three-quarters that of a healthy person. She also had a hole in the heart, breathing difficulties and poor circulation. Her parents were told at one stage that she would not live beyond her fifth birthday.

They found a specialist at Birmingham Children's Hospital who said he could operate, but their hopes took a battering with each delay.

At the time, Mrs Cater, a 32-year-old office manager from Bradford, said: 'It's crazy. I can't believe in this day and age we don't have enough intensive care beds.'

A spokesman for Birmingham Children's Hospital said priority had to be given to children whose lives were at immediate risk.