Gynaecology waiting lists in UK double, leaving women in pain

Gynecology waiting lists across the UK have more than doubled since February 2020, according to a BBC study.

Records show there were about 255,046 appointments for women’s health exams, up from 360,400 just before the pandemic.

This suggests that at least around 630,000 people are on the medical treatment list for problems ranging from uterine fibroids and endometriosis to treatment for incontinence and menopause.

Health ministers across the UK say they are working on plans to improve the situation, but health leaders say women are being let down.

Anna Cooper, 31, from near Wrexham, North Wales, has suffered from severe endometriosis since she was a teenager.

The disease, in which tissue similar to the endometrium grows outside the uterus, left her with permanent organ damage.

She had to undergo 17 surgeries, including a hysterectomy to remove her uterus.

She will also have two stomas for the rest of her life, as her bladder and large parts of her intestines had to be removed. She lives with her partner and young daughter.

“This disease is controlling my social life, my work life, and my ability to live every day.

“It’s not just a period issue. It’s a systemic issue. It ripples throughout your body,” she says.

BBC interviewed her in 2023 On founding her own charity, menstrual health project.

A year on, she says she is still in pain and is back on the NHS waiting list because of bleeding after her hysterectomy.

Anna wears a morphine patch every day to deal with the pain.

But for years, she says, doctors didn’t listen to her, telling her the pain was “all in her head” and that she needed to “just get used to it.”

She feels her life would have been different if she had been diagnosed sooner. “Due to delayed treatment, I lost some of my major organs.

“My doctors told me that if they had discovered the disease earlier, I wouldn’t have ended up where I am now, living with two stomas and going through early menopause at 31. ”

Over the past three years she has spent £25,000 on private businesses and decided to borrow money to support them.

She considers herself lucky to have access to private care, but feels she has had “little choice” because the waiting list is so long.

Endometriosis “plagued” her mentally for most of her adult life.

“It’s really hard to deal with something that looks like everything is fine from the outside, but inside you’re just hopeless.”

“Women are being let down” and change is “urgently needed”, says Dr Rani Thakar, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (RCOG).

university new report We are looking at the impact on people waiting for care.

“Gynecology is the only elective department that treats only women and has some of the worst waiting lists in the whole of the UK.

“This reflects that women and their health are not consistently prioritized,” Dr. Takhar says.

“Women are suffering. We know it’s affecting their mental health. They can’t go to work, they can’t socialize.”

Dr Thakar added that if the women had received treatment sooner, their symptoms would not have progressed as much and they would have continued to contribute to society.

a recent reports A report led by the NHS Confederation suggests that missed work due to heavy menstruation, endometriosis, uterine fibroids and ovarian cysts costs the UK economy nearly £11 billion every year.

RCOG is calling on the government to provide longer-term funding to ensure people get the support they need.

There are some signs that the waiting list is starting to improve.

This year, waiting times have not increased so rapidly; Latest NHS England statistics We can see that the number on the waiting list has decreased by more than 4,700 people compared to the previous month.

However, the situation is still much worse than before the pandemic. In February 2020, there were 66 cases of obstetrics and gynecology that had been waiting for more than a year. Currently, that number is over 22,000.

Dr Sue Mann, NHS England’s national clinical director for women’s health, said that despite staff working hard to see more patients, women were still waiting too long for important gynecological appointments. I admitted that there was.

She says one way to help is through a team of professionals working outside the hospital.

“Some of these conditions can be very well managed by local specialty health teams, which is why we are expanding our Neighborhood Women’s Health hubs to every community health system across the country.”

In Wales, the government is due to announce its women’s health plan next month.

“A 10-year women’s health plan is being developed to drive the improvements needed to provide women with high-quality health services throughout their lives,” a Welsh Government spokesperson said.

Each region in Northern Ireland is working on a plan to improve gynecological services, addressing 20 challenges. Recommendations made in recent reports.

The Ministry of Health said some would require “additional funding and time to implement”.

Scottish Women’s Health Minister Jenni Minto said excessively long waiting times were unacceptable and more funding would be directed towards women’s health.

“That’s why one of our first priorities is to women’s health plan Improving access to appropriate support, diagnosis and treatment for women. ”

Anna Cooper wants ministers to “follow through on their word”.

If the government says it will prioritize women’s health, it needs to show it is doing just that, she says.

“Right now they’re not putting it out there. This is people’s lives and we’re rolling the dice…and I have a daughter, so I really worry about the future of young girls and women. ”

To estimate the size of the UK’s gynecological waiting list, we combined the latest available figures for all four countries. Tracking by RCOG.

This includes waiting times for gynecological appointments and planned procedures, but does not include emergency appointments, such as for suspected cancer.

We know the size of the waiting list, and some patients may require multiple appointments.

The number of people waiting is estimated to be at least 634,239 and could be significantly higher.

We looked at this and solved it Data from the UK NHS This suggests that across the entire waiting list, there is a difference of about 16% between the number of reservations and the number of people waiting.

We applied this to our gynecology waiting list.

The scale of the problem may be underestimated because gynecological patients are less likely to wait two appointments than patients in some other specialties.

Additional reporting by Vicki Loader, Catherine Snowdon and Alison Benjamin