University Hospitals Sussex admits errors, failures and surgeon disagreements in case of Ken Valder

A troubled NHS trust has apologised to the family of a man who died after a series of delays led to him waiting four times longer for an operation than a national cancer target.

Before he died in November 2022, Ken Valder, 66, a former tax inspector and voluntary steward at Brighton & Hove Albion football club, complained of “delays after delay” to his treatment for oesophageal cancer.

With nearly 60% of NHS cataract operations outsourced, critics say it is sapping funding for more serious conditions

Hundreds of thousands more NHS patients a year are having cataracts removed in England in a boom driven by private clinics – but funded by taxpayers.

Doctors say the trend, which now means nearly 60% of NHS cataract operations are outsourced to private providers – up from 24% five years ago – is piling pressure on already stretched NHS finances and sapping the funds needed for more serious conditions that can lead to blindness.

King’s College and Guy’s and St Thomas’ trusts were worst affected by ransomware attack by Russian gang Qilin

Hospitals in London had to cancel almost 1,600 operations and outpatient appointments in the first week after being hit with a Russian cyber-attack , the NHS has disclosed.

The two major acute hospital trusts in the capital that were worst affected postponed 832 surgical procedures between Monday 3 June, when the hack began, and Sunday 9 June.

New research into the dying brain suggests the line between life and death may be less distinct than previously thought

Patient One was 24 years old and pregnant with her third child when she was taken off life support. It was 2014. A couple of years earlier, she had been diagnosed with a disorder that caused an irregular heartbeat, and during her two previous pregnancies she had suffered seizures and faintings. Four weeks into her third pregnancy, she collapsed on the floor of her home. Her mother, who was with her, called 911. By the time an ambulance arrived, Patient One had been unconscious for more than 10 minutes. Paramedics found that her heart had stopped.

After being driven to a hospital where she couldn’t be treated, Patient One was taken to the emergency department at the University of Michigan. There, medical staff had to shock her chest three times with a defibrillator before they could restart her heart. She was placed on an external ventilator and pacemaker, and transferred to the neurointensive care unit, where doctors monitored her brain activity. She was unresponsive to external stimuli, and had a massive swelling in her brain. After she lay in a deep coma for three days, her family decided it was best to take her off life support. It was at that point – after her oxygen was turned off and nurses pulled the breathing tube from her throat – that Patient One became one of the most intriguing scientific subjects in recent history.

Rishi Sunak promised speedier care, but specialists believe long waits for hospital beds are costing thousands of lives

On one half of Rishi Sunak’s NHS pledge to voters, there has been some modest progress in recent months. Waiting lists for pre-planned hospital treatment and outpatient appointments in England fell from 7.8m to 7.6m between September and December last year. Given the intense pressures on the health system from multiple directions, this improvement is a remarkable achievement by the trusts that brought it about – even while the overall situation remains dire, with waiting lists predicted to remain longer than before the pandemic until 2030 at the earliest.

But the prime minister’s commitment was not limited to waiting lists. The pledge he made in January last year, as one of five priorities on which he said voters should judge him, was that “NHS waiting lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly”. New calculations by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) show that, with regard to the broader aim of delivering speedier treatment, his government is falling shockingly short .

RCEM calculates 268 people are likely to have died each week in 2023 while waiting up to 12 hours for a bed

Almost 14,000 people died needlessly last year in England while waiting in A&E for up to 12 hours for a hospital bed, a new estimate suggests.

Calculations by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) based on a large study of excess deaths and waiting times show that 268 people are likely to have died each week in 2023 because of excessive waits in emergency departments.