Blair has no answer for Trust under fire for axing heart op

Hospital chiefs were accused of sacrificing heart patients' welfare to meet targets after scrapping their operations.

Oxford Radcliffe NHS Trust has wiped dozens of people from waiting lists for cardiac catheter ablation, the operation which cured Tony Blair of an irregular heartbeat.

The cash-strapped trust said it had been forced to restrict the treatment to only the most desperate cases in an attempt to cut costs. But patients, pressure groups and MPs say they believe the operations - which have a 95% success rate - were stopped to meet maximum six-month wait targets.

The alarm was first raised by the Arrhythmia Alliance a month ago after the patients' group was deluged by complaints from disappointed sufferers and concerned doctors. Their letters to the Prime Minister and Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt went unanswered. They now hope the public row will force the trust into a rethink and prevent other trusts around the country using the same tactics.

Founder Trudie Lobban told the Press Association: "The trust are saying it's because of the cost, but it's ironic that with one fell swoop they have got rid of their waiting list. Some of these patients cannot work - yet Tony Blair had the operation and he was back at work the next day, running the country.

"It is a scandal what they are doing. These poor people are being made scapegoats for the bureaucracy which goes on behind."

She said her concerns were shared by Professor Roger Boyle, the Government's heart tsar, who was "appalled" by the decision to cut the operations. Stephen Eeley, one of those dropped from the list, said he now faced spending the rest of his life "breathless and tired" because of a "short-term fix to massage figures".

An administrator at Oxford University, he said he was "furious" to be told he no longer met the criteria for treatment after months spent on the waiting list. "This is exactly the same thing that Tony Blair suffered," he said.

"To suffer what he suffered and to have no recourse to anybody is very extremely frustrating. They sorted him out immediately. It's very cynical that the Radcliffe Hospital have chosen (to discontinue) this particular procedure, which I understand they do very well. It's a short-term fix to massage figures.

Ms Hewitt said she understood patients' concerns but insisted it was a local decision. "It's not at all clear to me why the costs at the Oxford Radcliffe of doing that particular procedure are so much higher than the average," Ms Hewitt said.