Boys ‘at risk’ because of waiting list

Press, 29 May 1985, Page 43

Boys ‘at risk’ because of waiting list

PA Auckland Hundreds of Auckland boys are at risk of cancer and infertility later in life because of waiting lists at Auckland’s Princess Mary Hospital, according to an Auckland doctor.

A pediatric surgeon, Dr Stuart Ferguson, says the boys, who are waiting for operations for undescended testes, are part of a waiting list of 1000 at the hospital. He says the waiting list could be cut to zero in a year if the hospital was run more efficiently. “The list is growing faster than we can take patients off,” he said. “A year ago it was about half what it is now but it just keeps growing and growing.”

Most of the children on the waiting list faced about a two-year wait for their operations, he said.

Undescended testes was a common complaint affecting about 1 per cent of baby boys. If the children were not operated on before their second birthday they faced greater risks of infertility later in life.

“The risk of getting cancer is also much higher than normal — about 30 times greater than if they had had the operation before two years.” Most of the work done by the three surgeons at the hospital was mainly on lifethreatening conditions and even then they could hardly cope with the workload. The deputy medical superintendent for Auckland Hospital, Dr Roger Greenhough, said he would rather talk directly to Dr Ferguson about alleged inefficiencies than comment in the newspapers.