All emergency and elective surgeries are still being postponed or moved at the Pasqua Hospital after a ventilation system failure Monday afternoon.
Officials say a fan belt failure caused small particles of debris to blow through a portion of the hospital’s ventilation system, ultimately affecting the medical equipment sterilization area.
All the equipment needs to be sanitized and some procedures were being moved to the Regina General Hospital.
All emergency and elective surgeries were impacted, including some procedures done in outpatient department such as ambulatory care and the eye centre.
“Any surgery that was emergent we had a plan to have the equipment move over from general to have that happen at the Pasqua or we moved the patient to the general,” Garrat said.
“The safety of our patients is of the utmost importance to us, and we cannot proceed with these surgeries and procedures without access to appropriately cleaned and sterilized equipment,” Garratt said.
READ MORE: 80 surgeries to date postponed at Pasqua due to sterilization issue
Garratt said the hospital does keep up with regular maintenance in that area, but sometimes things can get missed.
“I’m aware that preventative maintenance was done in that particular area in November of 2016. So preventative maintenance occurs on a regular basis. It doesn’t always catch issues that will arise,” she said.
In total, 60 surgeries and 25 procedures were affected. They were all elective surgeries involving orthopedics, urology, ophthalmology, plastic surgery and other general surgery.
Elective surgeries scheduled for Wednesday have been postponed, but they’re expected to resume on Thursday. Scheduled procedures are expected to proceed beginning Wednesday.
Officials have been notifying patients but anyone with questions should contact the department where their procedure is scheduled to be done.