'Stressful' and 'demoralizing': Canadians share their experience with surgery delays amid rise in respiratory cases

CTV National News: Dying on the waitlist The number of Canadians dying while waiting for surgery is on the rise and expected to get worse. Heather Wright reports.

Hannah Braaksma’s son, Barrett, was born with a severe heart defect known as pulmonary atresia. As a result of the condition, doctors said Barrett might require open-heart surgery soon after birth, said Braaksma, who lives in Mission, B.C.

However, Barrett is now 14 months old and still has not been admitted for surgery. Part of the reason behind this is the surge in children currently being admitted to BC Children’s Hospital, she said.

“They told me by six months, he needs that surgery,” Braaksma told CTV National News’ Heather Wright last week. “And then it just kept getting postponed … before they cancelled and said that they didn't have the equipment that they needed for it and also just the lack of staff.”

Braaksma is one of several Canadians who reached out to CTVNews.ca to share how their family members’ surgeries have been delayed or cancelled due to the rise in hospitalizations involving respiratory illnesses. The emailed responses have not all been independently verified.

Although it has been more than a month since Barrett’s appointment was cancelled due to limited resources in October, Braaksma and her family still do not have a date for their son’s surgery, she said.

“They told us that it's probably not going to happen now until the new year because their staff is too busy looking after kids coming in with RSV or COVID,” she said. “It is very stressful … you just feel helpless.”

Hospitals across Canada remain overwhelmed by a hike in the number of patients with respiratory illnesses. Pediatric hospitals have been hit especially hard. In addition to Barrett, another six-month-old boy had his heart surgery at BC Children’s Hospital cancelled in November due to a lack of resources. Meanwhile, in Quebec, another child’s kidney transplant surgery was recently postponed due to a high volume of patients admitted with viral infections.

The rise in demand has led some facilities, such as the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, to put some surgical procedures on hold for the near future in order to “preserve critical care capacity.” Others appear to have cancelled certain surgeries indefinitely.

Living with pulmonary atresia continues to affect Barrett’s day-to-day life, Braaksma said. He requires his own oxygen supply at home due to low oxygen saturation levels, and his skin will develop a bluish tint from excessive crying due to the lack of oxygen in his blood.

Braaksma said his development has also been delayed as a result of his condition. At 14 months, Barrett has just started to crawl, something that quickly leaves him out of breath, she said.

“The longer we keep postponing the surgery, I don't know what his outcome is going to be,” said Braaksma. “He desperately needs this surgery.”

PROBLEM WILL LIKELY ‘GET WORSE BEFORE IT GETS BETTER’: EXPERT

More than 13,500 Canadians died in 2021 while waiting for surgery or diagnostic scans, according to a new report released by SecondStreet.org. This is based on an annual analysis of government data conducted by the think tank.

According to SecondStreet.org, surgical waiting list deaths have increased by 24 per cent over the past four years, hitting a new high since the organization started tracking this data in 2018. However, the report is based on incomplete data, as not all health regions and hospitals were able to provide this information, said Colin Craig, president of SecondStreet.org.

“If anything, the number is underreported,” Craig told CTV National News last week.

A separate report released by SecondStreet.org in November shows at least 2.9 million Canadians are currently on a waiting list for surgery, diagnostic scans or to see a specialist. However, the report is also based on incomplete data, and the organization estimates the actual total to be at least 3.7 million Canadians.

Patricia Wilson said she has been waiting for pelvic reconstruction surgery for two years now, having been diagnosed with pelvic prolapse in September 2020.

“I lived and worked with daily pain since the start of this demoralizing experience,” the 64-year-old wrote in an email to CTVNews.ca on Dec. 13. “I haven’t had a normal night's sleep since the diagnosis.”

Wilson has been told the delay is due to staffing shortages among nurses. Although she was promised surgery this fall, the Ottawa resident has not yet been given a date for her procedure, she said. After visiting another doctor for a second opinion, Wilson said she was told she may need to wait at least one more year.

“We're not in a life-threatening situation but are in pain and suffering for months,” Wilson told CTV National News last week, referring to Canadians waiting for non-urgent surgeries. “I want my life back … it just takes over your life.”

Koen van Dijk said his knee replacement surgery has been delayed twice after speaking with a surgeon about scheduling an appointment one year ago. Medical staff at the Queen Elizabeth II Ambulatory Care Centre in Grande Prairie, Alta., told him the reason behind the delay was the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a lack of hospital resources.

“My leg is getting worse and worse,” Van Dijk told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview on Sunday. “I can’t do my normal things anymore [like] grocery shopping, I have to lean on a cart to get out the store.”

Van Dijk met with medical staff for preoperative care on Nov. 23 and now has a surgery for his left knee scheduled for Dec. 30, although he remains unsure of whether the procedure will be rescheduled again.

“I’ll believe it when I wake up after the surgery’s done,” he said.

With an aging population, the problem is likely to “get worse before it gets better,” Craig said.

“It's just a fact of life that as we get older, we need the health-care system more, so we're going to see more and more pressure … every year that goes by,” he said.

In order to relieve some of the stress on Canada’s health-care system, Craig is calling for structural health reform. This involves improving the process by which provincial and territorial governments track data related to waiting list deaths, Craig said. It should also include giving patients the option to access private health care.

Aside from long-term measures, one Ontario hospital is also looking into the possibility of hiring unvaccinated health-care workers to address the surge in patients.

“Without structural health reform, I think we're going to be talking about this problem for years and years to come,” Craig said.

Earlier this year, the federal government announced it would be spending an additional $2 billion on health care in order to address surgery backlogs by funding thousands more surgeries.

CONSEQUENCES OF LONG WAIT TIMES

While the sudden increase in sick patients may be exacerbating surgical delays in Canada, the issue of patients dying while waiting for surgeries or scans existed before the pandemic began, said Craig.

“If you hear someone say that this is because of the pandemic, that's simply not correct – the numbers were increasing across the country, even before COVID arrived on our shores,” Craig said. “For the past 30 years, we've spent more and more money on health care … and yet waiting lists are growing longer every year.”

Joan Hama from West Kelowna, B.C., said her colon ruptured while she was waiting for a colonoscopy several years ago. After going for a regular check-up in July 2016, her doctor recommended she have a colonoscopy done within two months.

After a delay in booking the procedure, Hama was able to schedule an appointment for Nov. 10, 2016. However, her colon burst two days before the procedure.

“I didn't know what was going on, I just knew I was in a lot of pain,” she told CTV National News. “I ended up going to emergency in Kelowna, and I drove myself because I didn't know what else to do.”

Hama underwent emergency surgery, during which she went into septic shock, she said. During the surgery, doctors had to resuscitate her several times.

“The surgeon had indicated that 85 per cent of people don't make it through that,” she said, referring to the severe sepsis she developed. “We need to do something in British Columbia and I think probably throughout Canada about these wait times.”

If her procedure took place within the recommended two months, Hama said this would have prevented her colon from rupturing. Now 66 years old, she continues to advocate for improved wait times within British Columbia’s health-care system.

“Patients are dying while they're waiting for diagnostic scans, too, and it's very crucial that governments spend more time thinking about the consequences from making people wait so long for health care,” Craig said.