NT Health clinical service planning following heartbreaking health stats
Territorians have the lowest heart attack survival rates in Australia. See why a life-saving surgery is still considered ‘unviable’ for the Top End.
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Territorians are the most likely to suffer a heart attack and the least likely to survive, with a life-saving surgical wing more than 300km away from Top End patients.
The NT Coroner revealed on Wednesday, that Royal Darwin Hospital staff were forced to conduct a “last resort” medical procedure in an attempt to save a 35-year-old woman going into cardiac arrest in 2021.
Coroner Elisabeth Armitage made no recommendations after handed down her findings investigating the death in care of the Indigenous mother-of-two, referred for cultural reasons as Janelle.
Ms Armitage concluded Janelle’s death in care was from a rare heart condition was “unavoidable” as there was no on-site Cardiothoracic Surgery service at Royal Darwin Hospital.
Her only hope of treatment 3000km away in Adelaide.
But two years before the 35-year-old’s heart stopped beating, Health Minister Natasha Fyles quietly scrapped plans for the same surgical program that could have saved her life.
In 2017-18 the NT Government committed $9m for the health surgery program, mirroring a similar proposal from the CLP.
The review was looking into the establishment of a Cardiothoracic Surgical Service in Darwin.
However, Ms Fyles quietly abandoned these plans in 2019, despite the Health Department already purchasing $1.2 million worth of equipment.
Following the coroner’s findings on Wednesday, Ms Fyles defended her decision saying the cardiothoracic surgery “would struggle with viability and could impact on other high need areas”.
“Health services in the Northern Territory are designed to meet the specific needs of the community, taking into account population size, vast geographic spread and clinical requirements.”
However, damning new health statistics show that Territorians are almost twice as likely to suffer from a heart attack than the national average.
The latest Productivity Commission health data said there were 515.3 acute coronary events per 100,000 NT adults in 2020.
Across Australia the rate was 276.9 heart attacks per 100,000 adults.
When paramedics were at the scene, the average Australian had a 50 per cent chance of surviving a cardiac arrest in 2021-22, according to the Productivity Commission Ambulance Service data.
But only a third of Territorians survived their heart attacks.
When resuscitation was attempted by a non-paramedic only 5 per cent of Territorians survived — compare to 21 per cent nationally — while ventricular fibrillation attempts increased survival rates to 33 per cent, still less than the national average of 44 per cent.
A NT Health spokeswoman said the heart surgical ward review found it would put “increased pressure on operating theatres, the Intensive Care Unit and other clinical support services”, and would require the recruitment of highly-trained staff, including cardiac surgeons, nurses, rehabilitation physiotherapists, and expert technicians and biomedical engineers to operate and maintain specialised equipment.
“However, given the health requirements of our population, NT Health is conducting clinical service planning and re-evaluating the need and viability of this speciality,” she said.
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