“The concern I and my colleagues have is the impact the four days of strike action next week is going to have on patients with cardiovascular disease who are on the waiting list for surgery. We already have a huge backlog of patients waiting to have cardiac surgery for conditions that are time-critical. And we know that cardiovascular disease is progressive. Once you’ve made a diagnosis, the sooner you operate on the patient, the better the outcomes.
“But the strikes mean that for those four days, essentially very little operating will occur at our three sites – at the Royal Brompton, Harefield and St Thomas’ hospitals. So we will still operate on emergency patients. But we won’t be able to invite patients in for elective – planned – surgery. And that’s a real concern.
