More than 172,000 patients in Sweden are currently waiting for surgery. One in ten of these patients will become too sick to have surgery.
There are several reasons for long wait times for surgery, as there are many factors that need to be considered in order for the procedure to be performed. For example, emergency surgeries can occur in between, and often both an intensive care unit and a post-operative care unit are needed. At the moment, for example, 13,500 people have been waiting for more than a year, and it is not uncommon for patients to become too ill to undergo surgery.
Birgitta Albinsson in Gothenburg, for example, had to wait four years for a back operation, only to be told that her general condition had become too bad for such an operation.
– I am completely written off. He apologized for how badly my case was handled and then explained that it was not possible to operate, she told the tax-funded Swedish state broadcaster SR.
At the spine clinic at Sahlgrenska University Hospital, where Birgitta was to be operated on, eight surgeons raised the alarm in November that the operation times were unreasonably long and well beyond the care guarantee.
“Seeing your patients suffer physically and psychologically due to unreasonable waiting times of 2-3 years is not acceptable. It is not ethically justifiable to allow this to continue. We all have thoughts of giving up and leaving a business we are passionate about and have spent a lot of time and effort to become good at”, they wrote in a debate article in the Göteborgsposten.
