Surgery to resume after hospital water leak resolved

Operations at NHS Lothian are expected to return to normal after they were suspended amid a small water leak at a hospital.

The health board announced on Monday that most non-emergency operations had been postponed due to water leaking in the Hospital Sterilisation and Decontamination Unit (HSDU) at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

The unit, which serves the whole of NHS Lothian, is where instruments are cleaned and prepared for surgery.

Capacity for up to 400 trays of surgical instruments daily has been secured, which means normal levels of surgery will resume by the end of the week, the health board said.

NHS Lothian medical director Tracey Gillies said medical staff will contact patients in coming days about rescheduled operations.

“We are very pleased that we can now focus on rebooking those patients whose operations had been postponed and we will do so by prioritising the most urgent cases first,” she said.

“Our teams will be in touch with their patients directly in the next few days to reschedule as soon as possible, so there is no need for patients to do anything.

“We do not anticipate that any more surgeries will have to be postponed as a result of this problem.

“Once again I’d like to apologise to everyone who has been affected for the worry and inconvenience caused.”