Patients who have pending plastic surgery through the National Health System wait an average of 236 days. Those who are going to undergo neurosurgery wait an average of 189 days and those who wait for trauma surgery wait an average of 139 days. These are the data from the Ministry of Health on waiting lists for surgical interventions related to June of this year and published this Wednesday.
Thus, the first half of the year ended with 848,340 people who were waiting for an intervention for an average of 121 days, which is 28,376 more people than twelve months before and an average time of nine more days.
As for specific processes, the operations that take the longest are those for ‘hallus valgux’, commonly known as a bunion (140 days), knee prosthesis (136 days) and prostate (128). However, the one that most patients are waiting for is cataract surgery, as there are 128,668 people awaiting this intervention, although 1,119 less than a year before. The next largest accumulation of patients awaiting inguinal or femoral hernia surgery, representing 38,829 people.
By autonomous community, Madrid is the one with the lowest waiting rate, with 10.06 per thousand inhabitants. The Spanish average is 17.93 per thousand inhabitants. Other communities such as the Balearic Islands (10.37), the Basque Country (10.18) or the Valencian Community (10.90) are also below the average. On the opposite side, it is Cantabria that accumulates the highest rate (29.21 per thousand inhabitants), followed by Andalusia, Extremadura and Catalonia.
Furthermore, 20.5 percent of Spaniards who are pending an operation wait more than 6 months, a percentage that drops to 0.2 percent in the Community of Madrid and up to 1.7 percent in the Basque Country. and which rises to 31.6% in Andalusia and up to 31.3 percent in Castilla-La Mancha.
The report also analyzes the time patients wait to have a consultation with a specialist doctor. The national average improves compared to the end of last year by 7 days (it goes from 101 in December 2023 to 94 in June) but in some communities this delay is considerably higher, such as in the Canary Islands (147), Andalusia (135). or Navarre (126). On the opposite side is Melilla, where the wait is 25 days, followed by the Basque Country (49) and La Rioja (58).
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