Surgery delays reach another record with 793,521 patients still waiting in Spain
More than 50,000 people are now waiting for surgery than in June last year as operation wait times spiral upwards again
Álvaro Soto / Álex Sánchez / Sara I. Belled
Madrid
Martes, 4 de abril 2023, 14:44
Waiting lists for surgery continue to spiral upwards across Spain and for the second consecutive semester have broken records.
A total of 793,521 patients were awaiting surgery on 31 December last year, according to the latest Ministry of Health data.
That figure was 51,003 patients more than in June 2022, when an all-time high was already reached, and 86,781 more than a year earlier, in December 2021.
The average time a patient waited in December to undergo surgery was 122 days, nine more than in June and only one day less than in December 2021, when the National Health System was suffering from the effects of the pandemic.
The number of patients waiting more than six months had also risen sharply to 22%, up from 17.6% six months earlier. The Ministry of Health put it down to a backlog of people who were waiting to undergo surgery during the covid-19 health emergency.
For this reason, the lowest number of patients on the waiting list was recorded in December 2020, with 649,879.
But figures from December 2019, the latest data available before Covid-19, showed the waiting list situation was still an issue where 704,997 patients were waiting for an operation, for which they waited 121 days on average and 19.9% waited for more than six months.
The specialty with the largest number of patients awaiting surgery were traumatology, with 190,990; followed by ophthalmology (172,093); general and digestive surgery, urology, otorhinolaryngology, maxillofacial surgery, plastic surgery, angiology/vascular surgery, pediatric surgery, dermatology and neurosurgery.
The specialties with the longest average waiting times were plastic surgery, with 242 days, and neurosurgery, with 203 days.
By regions, the Canary Islands and Castile-La Mancha were the communities with the longest average waiting time for an operation, 157 days, followed by Extremadura (156), Cantabria and Catalonia (154), Andalucía (134), Aragon (128), the Balearic Islands (124), Castille y León (123), La Rioja (111) and Murcia (100).
