Patient waiting for brain surgery has seizures every day and says life is 'getting worse'

Nathan Clarke's life is on hold while he waits for brain surgery to help with his epilepsy which causes him to suffer seizures every day, Political Correspondent Romilly Weeks has more

A patient waiting for a brain operation for 15 months says his life has been changed completely as he waits for news of his surgery that never arrives.

According to NHS England's latest figures, 5.6 million people were still waiting to start treatment at the end of July, including 293,102 waiting more than 52 weeks.

It marks the highest number of patients on the waiting list since records began in 2007.

Nathan Clarke is among that figure. He told ITV News it's "very frustrating" knowing "something can be done and it's not getting done."

While he waits for surgery to help his epilepsy, he says he is suffering seizures every day, has lost his job, can no longer driver and says his mental health is deteriorating.

"It’s terrible, you get no calls, you don’t hear nothing, no letters, so you’re literally left in limbo," he said.

"You don’t get nothing back from these people and it's upsetting really."

"It's changed my life completely, I used to be able to drive... all of that got stripped," Nathan Clarke has been waiting 15 months for brain surgery to help with his epilepsy and says the wait means his life is "getting worse every day"

His life is getting "worse every day", he says, and he cannot even risk a bath by himself in case he has a seizure and drowns.

"I have seizures generally daily because I’ll always wake up after my night sleep and I would have most likely had a seizure in my sleep," he said.

"Plus I can have them during the day and I have to take tablets for them morning and night."

Nathan Clarke talks about his frustration waiting for the surgery that could save him

He added: "It’s changed my life completely to be honest, I used to be able to drive, I used to have a job, all of that got stripped from me.

"And in the meantime I’ve just been waiting around now for I don’t even know how long."

July's figures for those who've been waiting more than a year are more than three times higher than the same month the year before, which stood at 83,203 patients.

A closer look at waiting times at the end of July 2021:

• 68.3% of patients waiting to start treatment were waiting up to 18 weeks - thus not meeting the 92% standard.

• The number of Referral To Treatment (RTT) patients waiting to start treatment was 5.6 million. Of those, 293,102 were waiting more than 52 weeks.

• For patients waiting to start treatment, the median waiting time was 10.9 weeks. The 92nd percentile waiting time was 43.8 weeks.

• During July, 1,604,888 patients started a new RTT pathway. An RTT pathway is the length of time that a patient has waited from a doctor's referral to the start of their treatment, or if they have not yet started treatment, the length of time a patient has waited so far.

• During the same month, 259,642 RTT patients started admitted treatment and 999,991 started non-admitted treatment.

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Over the past year, Mr Clarke says he struggles to speak sometimes and that his memory has been affected - adding he will forget things such as why he went upstairs.

"It's getting worse, [a lot] worse to be honest," he said.

"And that's the scary factor - how much worse does it get before it can't be treated?"

But Health Secretary Sajid Javid has admitted the patient backlog facing the health service will get even worse before it improves.

"The waiting lists will go up before they go down again," he said, but he insisted a 1.25 percentage point increase to National Insurance announced this week will raise enough money to "tackle" the growing problem.

The increase, which is also being applied to dividend tax, is expected to raise £36 billion over the next three years.

Mr Javid said he was warned that the NHS waiting list could reach 13 million without immediate action.

An extra £5.4 billion budget boost will be provided to the NHS over the next six months in a bid to tackle rising waiting lists, but this was just half the amount health service bodies said is needed to tackle the backlog and continue to respond to the pandemic.

Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at health charity The King’s Fund, warned that many of those on the waiting list are "often in pain" and on top of their symptoms, are "dealing with the uncertainty of when they will be treated."