Children's Health Ireland (CHI) has published two reports into children who underwent spinal surgery at Temple Street children’s hospital.
Both the Boston review and the internal CHI review were consolidated into a report on Temple Street published by the HSE on Monday, which revealed high complication rates following spinal surgeries performed by the consultant.
In the reports, it revealed that one child who required 34 subsequent visits to the operating theatre.
The reports looked at 16 children with spina bifida who underwent spinal surgery between October 1st, 2019 and October 31st, 2022.
Of the 16 children, 11 were girls and five were boys. with more than 80 per cent needing further surgery. 75 per cent suffered wound infection and 56 per cent needed to have metal implants removed.
Mean total number of visits to the theatre was 6.5 times with the highest number of visits 34.
The average time of surgery was 257 minutes, with the longest procedure taking 8523 minutes.
Three children experienced hypothermia, defined as under someone experiencing a temperature of under 35 degrees, during a procedure. The average time spent by a patient under 35 degrees was 180 minutes, with the longest a child spent having a low temperature was 360 minutes.
The average a child stayed following surgery was 2.8 days, with the longest stay 11 days.
Following the review, it said "A unified programme structure/governance around care for children with spina bifida is
important. Leadership, engagement, and accountability between surgeons and other clinicians are cultural mainstays.
"Solid governance structure with clinical leadership, enhanced interdisciplinary forums, and a quality improvement programme will support care planning and allow for benchmarking of programme performance.
"There were concerns raised regarding the outcomes of paediatric spinal surgical in children with spina bifida. To address these types of concerns, programme metrics designed to evaluate outcomes should be established and reviewed regularly. CHI at Temple Street should continue to provide oversight and increased training for staff caring for medically complex patients
undergoing spine surgery.
"“CHI at Temple Street’s waiting time for surgery did not appear to have a negative impact on the increased rate of post-operative complications. However, high-complexity surgery requires significant resources and therefore if these surgeries are going to continue to be done at CHI at Temple Street these resources need to be available.
"Alternatively, CHI leadership may want to consider and assess the opportunity to offer some or all these surgeries at another CHI facility.”
