Save Cardiac Surgery at Sydney Children's Hospital
Save Cardiac Surgery at Sydney Children's Hospital
The issue
Help save lives of children at Sydney Children’s Hospital (SCH) Randwick!!!
My daughter Alexia is just 8 years old. She had a severe influenza infection and was transferred to SCH Randwick from Bankstown Hospital. She rapidly deteriorated and couldn’t breathe, with dangerously low oxygen levels. Doctors told me she was in full septic shock. Aleixa was placed into an induced coma within the hour arriving and the unknown awaited us. Alexia was on a ventilator and then put on ECMO for 5 days.
Phoenix was born at Wollongong Hospital. Due to severe Meconium Aspiration, he was transferred to the Royal Hospital for Women. With solid lungs, neonatologists were unable to oxygenate him. On his first day of life, Phoenix was rushed down the corridor to the co-located SCH ICU.
The children’s cardiac surgeon and surgical team of SCH Randwick were on-site to urgently put Alexia & Phoenix onto an ECMO machine, oxygenating blood from the heart and bypassing their heart and lungs.
Sixteen children have urgently needed ECMO at SCH Randwick in the last 18 months. This service needs an on-site cardiac surgical program to be viable. It is required for children with life-threatening cardiac or respiratory illnesses. When needed, it is needed immediately. SCH Randwick has provided a safe cardiac surgical and ECMO program for more than 3 decades. No children’s hospital in Australia or New Zealand provides ECMO without a cardiac surgical program.
Peter Low started a petition 4 years ago to maintain cardiac surgery at SCH Randwick. His son Cooper was 10 days old when he was transferred to SCH and went into cardiac arrest from viral myocarditis. He survived because of SCH Randwick’s on-site cardiac surgical team. After 63,000 signatures and multiple reviews, the NSW Government announced cardiac surgery would continue at Randwick.
The Health Minister Hon. Ryan Park has now back-flipped and decided that all cardiac bypass surgery will only be performed at Children’s Hospital Westmead. He states his decision is based on expert opinions, yet the two independent reviews which were both undertaken for NSW Health made recommendations in 2020 and 2021 that Sydney needed 2 comprehensive specialist children’s hospitals, and that low and medium-complexity cardiac surgery was safe to be conducted at both sites and “should be conducted at both sites”.
SCH Randwick provides comprehensive paediatric health care, and as a tertiary referral hospital, receives up to 75% of critically ill children that are retrieved to a paediatric ICU in NSW. Cardiac surgery is crucial to the operation of a high-level hospital, supporting all subspecialties including cancer care, newborn medicine, ENT, trauma and intensive care.
Sick children at SCH are being put at risk by the Hon. Ryan Park’s decision to stop cardiac surgery including cardiac bypass at SCH Randwick. Please sign this petition to get Hon. Ryan Park to honour his previous commitment of restoring cardiac surgery at SCH Randwick. The Minister of Health must take action and lay out a timeline for the return of cardiac bypass surgery at SCH Randwick.
Supported by Sydney Children's Hospital Branch of the NSW Nurses & Midwives Association
79,777
The issue
Help save lives of children at Sydney Children’s Hospital (SCH) Randwick!!!
My daughter Alexia is just 8 years old. She had a severe influenza infection and was transferred to SCH Randwick from Bankstown Hospital. She rapidly deteriorated and couldn’t breathe, with dangerously low oxygen levels. Doctors told me she was in full septic shock. Aleixa was placed into an induced coma within the hour arriving and the unknown awaited us. Alexia was on a ventilator and then put on ECMO for 5 days.
Phoenix was born at Wollongong Hospital. Due to severe Meconium Aspiration, he was transferred to the Royal Hospital for Women. With solid lungs, neonatologists were unable to oxygenate him. On his first day of life, Phoenix was rushed down the corridor to the co-located SCH ICU.
The children’s cardiac surgeon and surgical team of SCH Randwick were on-site to urgently put Alexia & Phoenix onto an ECMO machine, oxygenating blood from the heart and bypassing their heart and lungs.
Sixteen children have urgently needed ECMO at SCH Randwick in the last 18 months. This service needs an on-site cardiac surgical program to be viable. It is required for children with life-threatening cardiac or respiratory illnesses. When needed, it is needed immediately. SCH Randwick has provided a safe cardiac surgical and ECMO program for more than 3 decades. No children’s hospital in Australia or New Zealand provides ECMO without a cardiac surgical program.
Peter Low started a petition 4 years ago to maintain cardiac surgery at SCH Randwick. His son Cooper was 10 days old when he was transferred to SCH and went into cardiac arrest from viral myocarditis. He survived because of SCH Randwick’s on-site cardiac surgical team. After 63,000 signatures and multiple reviews, the NSW Government announced cardiac surgery would continue at Randwick.
The Health Minister Hon. Ryan Park has now back-flipped and decided that all cardiac bypass surgery will only be performed at Children’s Hospital Westmead. He states his decision is based on expert opinions, yet the two independent reviews which were both undertaken for NSW Health made recommendations in 2020 and 2021 that Sydney needed 2 comprehensive specialist children’s hospitals, and that low and medium-complexity cardiac surgery was safe to be conducted at both sites and “should be conducted at both sites”.
SCH Randwick provides comprehensive paediatric health care, and as a tertiary referral hospital, receives up to 75% of critically ill children that are retrieved to a paediatric ICU in NSW. Cardiac surgery is crucial to the operation of a high-level hospital, supporting all subspecialties including cancer care, newborn medicine, ENT, trauma and intensive care.
Sick children at SCH are being put at risk by the Hon. Ryan Park’s decision to stop cardiac surgery including cardiac bypass at SCH Randwick. Please sign this petition to get Hon. Ryan Park to honour his previous commitment of restoring cardiac surgery at SCH Randwick. The Minister of Health must take action and lay out a timeline for the return of cardiac bypass surgery at SCH Randwick.
Supported by Sydney Children's Hospital Branch of the NSW Nurses & Midwives Association
79,777
The Decision Makers
Petition created on 21 September 2023