Surgeons clear three months of breast cancer operations in five days

Plastic surgeons operated on three months’ worth of breast cancer patients in five days using an innovative new method to cut down the waiting list.

Surgeons at St Thomas’ Hospital in Westminster Bridge Road carried out reconstructive surgery on 22 patients who had been diagnosed with breast cancer, were breast cancer gene carriers, or both.

Many had been on the waiting list for more than a year for their surgery.

Using a method pioneered at the trust, surgeons maximised theatre and surgeon efficiency safely allowing them to operate on many more patients in a day than would normally be possible.

Shanta Holder, 39, was one of the patients to be operated on during the five days. She was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in October 2022.

Ms Holder, a hairdresser from Kent, said: “All the staff at St Thomas’ were amazing – I call them heroes.

“I am quite young and this surgery is a really major change for me physically and emotionally, but they reassured me.”

The operations used an adapted version of the High Intensity Theatre (HIT) list method.

Dr Ahmad pioneered the idea of running two theatres and teams at the same time. The HIT list aims to minimise surgeon down-time, enabling them to move efficiently from patient to patient without waiting for patients to be anaesthetised and theatres to be set up.

Pari-Naz Mohanna, one of the leading surgeons in the team, said: “We wanted to safely tackle the backlog of reconstructive surgery, whilst continuing to operate on patients with newly diagnosed breast cancers.

“This needed months of detailed planning between myself, Dr Imran Ahmad and a number of other key team members, the plastic surgery service manager, surgical admissions, theatre and recovery staff, breast cancer reconstruction specialist nurses as well as the plastic surgery ward team led by their head nurse.

“This ensured patients were supported throughout their journey and we were truly blessed with unrivalled enthusiasm, passion, positive energy and commitment from all the staff involved.”

The Trust has now run 23 HIT lists, treating 410 patients across 9 different surgical specialities including gastrointestinal, gynaecology, orthopaedics, ENT and urology.

Ms Holder said: “From the first moment I met Miss Mohanna, she told me ‘I understand but it will be ok’.

“I took that reassurance and ran with it. Everyone made me feel comfortable – there was no fear or doubt.”

Pictured top: Surgeons in the operating theatre at St Thomas’ Hospital (Picture: St Thomas’ Hospital)