Sixty-two children who underwent spinal surgery in Ireland are to receive clinical follow-up as a precaution after an independent review.
The Health Service Executive is clinically reviewing the children following completion of an external report into the service.
The review concerns the practice of an individual consultant and the environment in which they operated at Children’s Health Ireland and the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Cappagh.
As part of the first phase, Mr Selvadurai Nayagam reviewed the care provided to a sample of 91 children whose surgery was carried out by the individual orthopaedic consultant.
He recommended that 62 of these children receive further clinical follow-up, and the families of those children have been contacted.
He considered the remaining children whose cases he reviewed did not require additional clinical follow-up arising from his work.
The clinical team caring for these children will continue to make the necessary decisions about their care in consultation with their families.
The lookback review will examine patients on whom the individual consultant performed surgeries between 2016 and 2023.
It will include all spinal surgery, operations on the spine or backbone, limb reconstruction and surgical dislocation of the hip, but not surgeries in the area of trauma and general orthopaedics.
Dr Henry said: “These follow-up appointments do not arise from any identified urgent risk or concern about individual patients but are intended to check on the patients’ clinical progress.
“The purpose is to determine if the intended benefits of these children’s surgery have been achieved.
“In some cases, it may be too early to make that assessment, in which case the relevant children will be reviewed again in future to ensure everything continues to progress as expected.”
