Sydney Children's Hospital still waiting for cardiac services to be restored

Almost three years ago, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard promised cardiac surgery would be restored to Sydney Children’s Hospital — but nothing has changed, with sick kids at the centre of a now decade long turf war.

Portia Anderson, the little bub that was on ECMO at Sydney Children's which is still waiting for funding for cardiac surgery.

Sydney Children’s Hospital takes the sickest emergency retrieval kids in the state but a three-year-old promise to return cardiac surgery services to the Randwick hospital still remains broken.

The tussle over cardiac resources between Sydney’s two tertiary paediatric hospitals, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead (CHW) and Sydney Children’s Hospital (SCH) has been going since the two hospitals merged under the Sydney Children’s Hospital Network almost a decade ago.

Now, with CHW conducting heart transplants, SCH staff fear they will lose the minimal cardiac services they have left and never receive the promised restart of cardiac surgery at Randwick.

SCH medical staff council chair Dr Puneet Singh said the delay in restarting cardiac surgery meant skills would be lost.

“Instead of recommencing cardiac surgery there is just review after review,” he said.

The Sydney Childrens Hospital in Randwick. Picture: Toby Zerna

The hospital still offers ECMO or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation to the sickest of children and, this year, they have put 10 children on the lifesaving heart lung bypass machine.

Portia Anderson, the little bub that was

on ECMO at Sydney Children's.

The procedure saved the life of one-year-old Portia Anderson in May.

Portia had respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and was in Liverpool Hospital before going into septic shock with pneumococcal.

She went into cardiac arrest within one hour of arriving at SCH, which was able to save her.

“She was then put on ECMO for five days … she got off ECMO on her first birthday. Her birthday is a big day for us,” Portia’s mum Megan Frew said.

A spokeswoman for the SCHN said cardiac services are being delivered to children at both children’s hospitals and there was a “$10 million investment for new equipment, infrastructure and staff to support children and families with cardiac disease”.