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Leeds brain surgery under review
A national review of neurosurgery for children could affect services in Leeds.
NHS bosses are hoping to improve care – which is also the aim of the review into children’s heart surgery.
In contrast to that, however, councillors were told that no centres currently providing paediatric neurosurgery were likely to close.
But a hospital manager warned various reviews could have an impact on Leeds Children’s Hospital.
Stacey Hunter, divisional manager at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said they supported their aims.
But she added: “If we stacked them next to each other and we are unsuccessful in a number of them, it becomes very difficult to shore up all the services that we would need to provide for the local population because they do need more than just the very specialised services.”
Leeds City Council’s Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Board discussed the national review of children’s neurosurgical services in England.
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Experts have recommended that networks should be set up so that children are always seen by a specialist.
Dr Colin Ferrie, consultant paediatric neurologist in Leeds, said only a small number of hospitals could provide 24-hour consultant access and this was not good enough.
He added: “There is some evidence that the outcomes for children were perhaps not as good as they could’ve been.”
Dr Ferrie said there was an initial feeling that the numbers of hospitals offering neurosurgery should be cut but it had been decided to set up networks instead.
“The view is that very few, if any, of the paediatric neurosurgery centres will close in the next couple of years, although it’s unclear what will happen beyond this,” he said.
Reviewers have also advised that more operations should be done on youngsters with epilepsy.
Councillors were told hospitals were bidding to do the extra surgery and that Leeds had initially teamed up with Sheffield and Newcastle – but the joint bid had to be withdrawn as they could not agree on all aspects.
The meeting heard this only related to surgery on children under six, of which Leeds only carried out on operation last year.
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Thursday 23 February 2012
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tildatwos
Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 12:52 PMWhich would you prefer - skilled experts with good 24-7 care or a local hospital which is convenient in distance but without sufficient operations and support each year to give the best outcomes? As surgery gets more complex and the number of options increases this will become of greater concern. I'd definately choose to travel however far that is - but from experience know that Leeds' children's neurosurgery team is excellent. This whole general debate over specialist services needs to more away from the 'must be near to me' issue - other countries don't have such localism, it's just that we've grown to expect everything on our doorstep. Times have moved on and we need to look at the bigger picture. It's not all about costs - often it's quality of care and that's what's most important.
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