Non-urgent pediatric surgeries postponed at Winnipeg children's hospital amid unprecedented flu season

Non-urgent pediatric surgeries are being postponed in Winnipeg as the children's emergency department struggles to keep up with an unprecedented number of critically ill children and infants being admitted with respiratory illnesses, the COO of the Health Sciences Centre said on Wednesday.

Over a 48-hour period on Sunday and Monday, 10 infants and children were admitted to the pediatric ICU (PICU), bringing the overall number of critically ill pediatric patients at HSC to 21, Dr. Shawn Young said at a Wednesday morning virtual news conference.

The pre-pandemic pediatric ICU capacity was nine, he said.

As a result, some non-urgent pediatric surgeries will be postponed as of tomorrow, so that staff can be deployed to support the pediatric ICU.

"Postponement [will] focus on patients who can safely remain at home until their surgery, and where this will not result in negative medical outcomes," Young said.

These surgical patients likely would have required a post-procedure stay in the PICU, where resources are limited, he said.

Postponing surgeries will allow the equivalent of 4.7 full-time nurses to be redeployed to the PICU to support veteran care teams, he said.

Young children are more often more vulnerable to severe outcomes from respiratory viruses.

"Having them avoid travel and admission to hospital for non-urgent surgery at our height of respiratory [virus] season will help lessen the risks that they face," Young said.

Surgeries that should not be delayed due to concern about medical consequences to the patient will not be delayed, and at this time, Young said these changes will not impact adult surgeries.

Majority of critically ill patients under 2 months old: doctor

The children's hospital is seeing a higher number of daily admissions — the emergency department saw 128 pediatric patients yesterday, and 18 were admitted.

Dr. Elisabete Doyle, the head of pediatric medicine, said the severity of illness is much higher, with over 50 per cent of cases being triaged as moderate to high acuity.

The primary illnesses that are driving the surge are respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza.

"In November of this year, we saw 196 cases of influenza in [the emergency department], this is about four times the number that we were seeing in pre-pandemic times," Doyle said.

So far in December, the emergency department has seen 87 influenza cases.

"Currently at this pace, we are set to see 245 cases [this month], which would be higher than any flu season in the past five years," she said.

All but a handful of patients are infants and toddlers. Most are under two months old.

In the last 48 hours, Young has put out a call for nurses across the province with pediatric critical care experience who may be able to help with the surge in critically ill children.

The number of patients in the neonatal ICU (NICU) is currently 48, nearing the baseline capacity of 50.