Children are having to wait up to 27 months to get an MRI scan in the State’s largest paediatric hospital.
Staff at Our Lady's Children's Hospital in Crumlin have also expressed concern about the lack of an out-of- hours MRI service for emergency cases, according to internal correspondence seen by The Irish Times.
Waiting times for scans for many children have continued to climb despite efforts to clear the backlog by providing MRIs on Saturday mornings.
Each week, the hospital’s radiology department can carry out only 42 of the 74 new requests it receives for scans, according to a memo from Dr Angela Byrne, director of the department, to the medical board, last month.
She says her department has access to “an already stretched” anaesthetic service only 2½ days a week. The waiting time for children who require general anaesthesia for an MRI is up to 27 months, her letter states. For walk-in patients and children requiring sedation, the wait is six months.
Sedation
Children under two require sedation for an MRI, and under-sevens are put under general anaesthetic. This makes the scan more time-consuming, up to 45 minutes, but MRIs are preferred to X-rays because they do not involve radiation.
The MRI scanner in Crumlin is used for 35 hours a week. Although urgent cases are given priority, staff say some children with no symptoms could stay on the waiting list despite having an undiagnosed condition such as a brain tumour.
Dr Byrne said while the yearly output of scans has increased, further increases are not possible without more resources.
A hospital spokesman said it was exploring all options to ensure resources were fully utilised. Where children required general anaesthetic, there were “resource challenges”.
Risk issues and the need for additional resources are being raised with the HSE, he added.
