The Health Ministry is checking why a 94-year-old woman with an infected leg wound waited seven and a half hours to be seen at the emergency room of the purulent-septic surgery clinic at Pirogov hospital in Sofia. The case came to light after a viewer's tip-off.
The woman is from Sofia and uses a wheelchair. Her relatives called an ambulance because of a bleeding wound on her leg. Paramedics took her to St Ekaterina hospital on suspicion of thrombophlebitis.
Doctors at St Ekaterina did not confirm that. They found no problem with her blood vessels, but an infected wound. One doctor gave her a referral to a purulent-septic surgery room.
The next day her relatives took her to Pirogov, which has the only purulent-septic surgery clinic in the capital. They arrived at about 9:00 am, and about 25 patients were already waiting outside the room.
"My aunt had to wait so long before she was seen," said the patient's niece. She said sitting in one place for so long with such a wound was very hard for the elderly woman, even in a wheelchair.
"Around the fifth hour she began to say she couldn't take any more and wanted to go home," the niece said.
Pirogov said all hospitals with a registered surgery department can treat purulent-septic wounds. The hospital said such a wound does not by itself require a patient to be admitted and treated in an emergency department.
Pirogov also said the clinic was set up mainly for its own patients. People are sent there from other Sofia hospitals and from all over Bulgaria, which puts a strain on staff.
According to the ministry, 30 hospitals in Sofia work under a clinical pathway that includes purulent-septic care. The ministry said that each hospital's own rules set out how it opens outpatient rooms for different specialities.
The ministry did not say how many emergency rooms for purulent-septic surgery there are in the capital.