Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

HEALTH

Danish hospital made 293 cancer patients wait too long for surgery

Some 293 bowel cancer patients at Aarhus University Hospital waited longer than they should have to undergo surgery.

Published: 23 March 2023 16:35 CET
Danish hospital made 293 cancer patients wait too long for surgery
Almost 300 bowel cancer patients at Aarhus University Hospital were not operated on within a set treatment deadline, the regional health authority has stated. File photo: Bo Amstrup/Ritzau Scanpix

The Central Jutland health authority, which administrates the hospital in Aarhus, gave the figure in a review it released on Thursday.

The admission from the regional health board comes after broadcaster DR had reported that 182 patients with serious bowel cancer had waited too long for an operation at Aarhus University Hospital (AUH).

The period covered by DR’s reporting is May to December 2022, while the figure from Region Central Jutland is for January 2022 until February 2023.

Danish law requires cancer patients to be operated on within two weeks of the decision to operate being made.

But the Region Central Jutland review shows that the surgery deadline for patients at the department for stomach and bowel surgery at AUH was exceeded by up to 56 days.

On average, the two-week waiting time was exceeded by an average of 12.7 days for the 293 patients, according to the review.

“AUH cannot rule out that the extra waiting time for operations has caused a deterioration of disease in some of the patients who waited longer than the maximum waiting times,” the review states.

The review was ordered by the Danish Health Authority after the waiting time issue was reported by DR last weekend.

AUH’s stomach and bowel surgery is highly specialised to a degree that some patients with advanced bowel cancer cannot be treated anywhere else in Denmark, according to news wire Ritzau.

Failure to operate within deadlines is primarily a result of a shortage of nurses at the department, according to the review.

“The shortage of nurses has meant that it was necessary to remove beds for the entirety of 2022 at Stomach and Bowel Surgery, AUH,” it states.

The executive director of Region Central Jutland, Helene Bilsted Probst, writes in the review that the authority “looks on this matter very seriously”.

A number of measures have been initiated to ensure the department complies with waiting times, the review also says.

Region Central Jutland is set to meet with Danish Health Authority officials over the matter on Friday. Possible national measures will reportedly be discussed at the meeting, including a potential plan to ensure highly specialised surgical procedures can be conducted at more than one hospital in Denmark.

READ ALSO: What exactly is wrong with the Danish health system?

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

HEALTH

Danish parliament to vote on citizens’ proposal on euthanasia

A citizens' proposal to allow euthanasia in Denmark has received 50,000 signatures, meaning the proposal is eligible to be debated and voted on in the Danish parliament for the first time.

Published: 29 May 2023 11:18 CEST
Danish parliament to vote on citizens' proposal on euthanasia

The proposal, put forward by Lars Lior Ramsgaard, a nurse from Aarhus, currently has 50,832 signatures, making it the first time a borgerforslag, or citizen’s proposal on euthanasia has passed the 50,000 threshold to be submitted to parliament. 

Ramsgaard told TV2 Østjylland in February that his motion was partly motivated by his work, in which he often meets patients who would like to be allowed to die, and partly by the case of his own mother, who had wanted to end her life at a time of her choosing but been unable to do so due to the law. 

The calls tor the parliament to “legalise active euthanasia when special circumstances are present”. 

In 2013, Ramsgaard said, a poll funded by Palliativt Videncenter, or Palliative Knowledge Centre and Trygfonden, the fund connected to the Tryg insurance company, found that 71 percent of the Danish population backed active euthanasia, while 61 percent of MPs were opposed.

The Danish Medical Association, which represents doctors in the country, is calling on MPs to reject the proposal.

“There are many reasons for this: we do not think that suffering should be managed by killing people; we are afraid of the slippery slope we see in countries where euthanasia has been brought in; and we think one should invest in proper end-of-life palliative care,” said Klaus Klausen, chair of the association’s ethics committee.

In 2018, a similar proposal reached 8,386 signatures and in 2019, another reached 1,409, according to the Politiken newspaper.

Under Denmark’s borgerforslag system, the parliament can decide to reject a proposal without a vote or discussion. 

SHOW COMMENTS