St. Boniface Hospital cancels all surgeries

WINNIPEG – A broken pipe has caused the cancellation of all surgeries at St. Boniface Hospital.

Elective surgeries have been put on hold and emergency procedures will be moved to other hospitals in Winnipeg after water leaked into the St. Boniface operating rooms, officials said.

That will push back elective surgeries at Health Sciences Centre and Grace Hospital.

“We call them elective surgeries but in reality these are necessary surgical cases, and some cases patients have been waiting for a very long time,” said Brock Wright of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. “It’s very distressing to them and families to prepare then have sudden cancellations.”

The extent of the damage at St. Boniface is still unknown. Officials say it could be several days before the OR is functioning again.

Roughly 10,000 surgeries are performed at St. Boniface every year. There were 20 surgeries cancelled on Wednesday.

“The damage is limited to the operating area; it does not impact the emergency department,” said Wendy Rudnick, chief nursing officer at St. Boniface. “It does impact our cardiac capacity, from a cardiology perspective, it doesn’t impact our inpatient side of operations at all.”