Minister Kuipers (Public Health) is requesting new advice on what should be done with the care of very young children with a heart defect. Hopefully, after that, a knot will finally be cut in this long-standing issue. The discussion is now based too much on emotion, writes political reporter Hans van Soest in this comment.
Every year about 1,400 children are born with a rare heart defect. Through an operation or a heart transplant, they can now survive where they previously had no chance. This highly specialized care is practiced by only eleven surgeons in the Netherlands. Because they operate in five children’s heart centers spread across the country, it is difficult to get the schedules done. This is just one of the reasons why the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate is advocating concentrating care in two centres. In addition, practitioners must acquire sufficient routine to be able to perform such highly specialized actions as error-free as possible. That is why we have been concentrating all kinds of complicated operations that can be planned for years. But that almost always leads to hassle.
Everyone agrees that concentration of care is good, but as soon as a decision has to be made, the hospitals that have to give something start to complain. This also happened with pediatric oncology. This is no different with the children’s heart centers. The intention to have the complicated operations only take place in Rotterdam and Utrecht led to anger in Leiden, Amsterdam and Groningen. Parents of sick children are asked to sign petitions and in Groningen the faltering damage repair caused by the gas drilling was also cited as an improper argument. It is also pretended that the departments disappear completely, but that is not the intention. Only the operations themselves are only done in two places.
There should be a new advice next summer. It is good if the interests of parents are also taken into account, who are extra burdened with a lot of traveling time if their baby is waiting for a major operation. Ultimately, however, concentration of this specialism leads to better care. If academic centers do not want to make a decision after thirty years of bickering about pediatric heart surgery, that does not bode well for the future.
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