Parents with children waiting for non-urgent surgery at SickKids left with few options
CBC
Parents of children who've been waiting years to have routine, non-urgent surgery at SickKids to correct a birth defect say they have few options — either they keep waiting or leave the country as the hospital struggles to reduce a growing surgical backlog.
A total of 698 children were on a waiting list for hypospadias surgery at SickKids as of Oct. 31, making up around 10 per cent of the 6,021 patients waiting for all kinds of surgeries.
CBC Toronto heard from some of those families after publishing a story earlier this week about a three-year-old boy who received a January 2023 date for his hypospadias surgery on Monday — three years after the diagnosis.
Some parents whose children don't yet have a hypospadias surgery date say they've reached out to other Ontario hospitals to see if they could get the procedure done there, only to be turned down, while another is considering travelling to the U.S. and paying out-of-pocket.
Their stories come as children's hospitals across the province are facing a surge in patients with respiratory illness. They highlight how increasing pressure on Ontario's health-care system is straining resources and pushing up wait times for non-urgent, non-emergency procedures.
That's forcing many children to wait beyond the recommended clinical window for treatment.
Hypospadias is a birth defect in which the urethra is not located at the tip of the penis, but instead on the shaft or near the point where the penis and scrotum meet.
While not life-threatening, medical experts say it should ideally be operated on within six to 18 months. If not treated, patients can develop urinary blockage, reproductive issues or psychological problems as they grow older.
Rebecca Ring, who lives in Port Perry, Ont., 83 kilometres northeast of Toronto, has a three-year-old son, Owen, who is waiting for a hypospadias operation.
"I have no idea when he will ever get this surgery," Ring told CBC Toronto.
She said she was told by a doctor at the urology department at SickKids in January 2020 that her son will likely require two procedures. Three years after diagnosis, the family doesn't have a date for the first.
"It's really frustrating and it's a bit heartbreaking not to know anything," said Ring. "I feel like we've been ignored."
Ring said her son got a referral to McMaster Children's Hospital in Hamilton, where they also perform hypospadias surgery, but the family was told they couldn't be served there because they live outside the hospital's catchment area.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Hamilton Health Sciences, which operates McMaster Children's Hospital, said it's facing its own pediatric surgical backlog.
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