HEALTH officials have expressed their shock after a Blackburn woman revealed she could have to wait two-and-a-half years for heart surgery.

Mary Duxbury, 62, of Arthur Way, has already been waiting for a year for life-saving triple heart bypass surgery at Blackpool Victoria Hospital.

Now the hospital has told her she could have to wait another 18 months, by which time she fears it could be too late.

The hospital said patients were dealt with on a priority basis according to its resources and added that new money announced by the Government would help reduce the waiting time.

But Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley NHS Trust chairman Ian Woolley said: "I've never heard of a waiting list as long as this - it does seem an extraordinary length of time.

"I would urge her to go and see her GP to see if he can either bring pressure to bear on Blackpool or to refer her to another NHS centre in the North West." And patients' watchdog Coun Frank Gorton, vice-chairman of the Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley Community Health Council, said: "It's tragic that a patient has to wait that length of time for this sort of operation.

"Hospitals say that they do it in clinical order; in other words, the more serious ones go first but everyone with that sort of condition is serious. You can't keep putting it off.

"If it's a case of simple economics then we should do something about it.

"However, if the NHS has some capacity, for instance in London, to take in this kind of patient then I don't see why this cannot be done.

"It shouldn't matter whether the patient is from Blackburn, Wigan or wherever, provided they are willing to go."

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