MEDICS at York District Hospital are claiming a lifesaving breakthrough in the treatment of patients who need major surgery.

The doctors believe they could reduce deaths following serious operations by more than 80 per cent.

Ian Woods: surgery study

Consultant anaesthetists Jonathan Wilson and Ian Woods say by precisely monitoring patients' heart activity and circulation for four hours before surgery, they can dramatically reduce the number of people dying during or after the operation.

They carried out a government-funded study on 138 patients requiring major surgery for cancer or furred or weakened arteries at YDH last year.

And they claim death rates among patients whose condition was monitored before their operation fell from 17 per cent to only three per cent.

Their findings were published in the British Medical Journal this week.

But since government funding for the study ended last summer, they have not been able to use the approach routinely - because there are not enough high dependancy beds and no-one to co-ordinate the scheme.

Dr Wilson said monitoring patients intensively and giving them drugs to strengthen their hearts before surgery meant they were in "optimum" condition when taken to the operating theatre.

He said not only would the method save lives, it would save the NHS up to £3,000 per patient, because they could leave hospital up to a week earlier. Under the scheme, instead of going to theatre from an ordinary ward, patients spend four hours in an intensive care or high-dependency bed where their condition can be monitored and drugs given.

Dr Wilson said he and his colleagues wanted to offer the treatment routinely to major surgery patients, but could not for lack of appropriate beds.

"Potentially there are up to five to six people every week who would benefit. We do our best to pre-optimise people, but it is very much on an ad-hoc basis." Hospital managers have been pressing North Yorkshire Health Authority for some time for two extra high dependency beds, and the authority admits they are a "priority need".

Hospital chief executive Dr Peter Kennedy said today the research by Dr Wilson, Dr Woods and their team was "excellent".

He added: "The health authority knows about the research and it will influence decision-making, I'm sure."

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