A DEDICATED surgeon has dramatically reduced waiting times for a specialist operation at his local hospital after using a week’s holiday to attend to 70 patients.

Satya Agarwala has been praised by health chiefs after he took annual leave to free himself from other surgical duties and work through a backlog of operations at the Worthing and Southlands Hospital, in Sussex.

Mr Agarwala, an orthopaedic surgeon, carried out 70 procedures to treat patients suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome. The condition causes severe pain and pins and needles in the wrist but is treatable with a straightforward operation. The week-long campaign by the surgeon, 60, has reduced the hospital’s orthopaedic waiting list by a month and left only nine carpal tunnel patients still awaiting operations.

Mr Agarwala and Phil Taylor, a surgical planning co-ordinator, located an under-used surgical day centre in the hospital and asked almost 100 patients if they wished to attend.

Yesterday the surgeon, who decided to take the annual leave to ensure that he was free, played down his achievements. He said that hospital managers and administrative staff deserved credit for helping the initiative to work so smoothly. “Treating patients is my job and this was just another way to do it,” he said.

“The actual operation is very straightforward. What takes the time is the paperwork and talking to patients, before and after, about the procedure.”

The surgeon, who has worked at the hospital for 18 years, carried out 14 procedures a day, with patients able to go home a few hours after being operated on. A spokesman for Worthing and Southlands Hospitals NHS Trust said that waits for orthopaedic procedures had now dropped from nine to eight months as a result.

“Waiting times are being reduced to meet patients expectations and the work of the day surgery admissions team, and in particular Mr Agarwala, is much appreciated,” he said.

The Government has made cutting waiting times one of its top priorities. The latest figures, released yesterday, revealed a further drop in patients needing to wait more than six months for an NHS operation.The figures showed that at the end of June there were still 43,200 patients waiting longer than six months for treatment in English hospitals — down 6,400 since the end of May.

Ministers have pledged that by December all patients in England will be seen within the six-month target.

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