Children’s Health Ireland utilise Citywest Care Facility for allergy initiative

Padraig Conlon 24 Nov 2020
Pictured L to R; Prof Jonathan Hourihane, Consultant Paediatrician at CHI at Temple Street, Eilish Hardiman, Chief Executive, Children’s Health Ireland, Sonja Medan (10 years) and Dr Mohammed Tariq, Consultant paediatrician, Midland Regional Hospital Portlaoise

Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) say they are experiencing similar challenges to all hospitals living with Covid-19 in terms of insufficient space to manage patients as they adhere to public health measures on social distancing and infection prevention and control guidance.

The CHI Allergy Team identified a unique opportunity to vastly reduce the current Day Case waiting list for patients requiring Food Challenges.

The use of the City West facility, with the support of the HSE, allowed for an initiative to manage a high volume of patients over a six week period from September 7.

During this period 474 children attended Food Challenge Clinic.

In Sept 2020, CHI had over 700 patients on their clinical immunology day case waiting list for drug and food challenges.

Pictured L to R; Prof Jonathan Hourihane, Consultant Paediatrician at CHI at Temple Street, Declan Sharkey with his son Ryan Sharkey (11yrs) from Donegal

Whilst constraints existed pre-Covid in terms of access to Day ward availability for these patients, this was compounded by the Covid-19 guidelines in place which resulted in a reduction in patient throughput on our acute hospitals.

Families whose children aged 2 to 18 years had been on waiting lists, some for up to four years, at CHI at Crumlin, Tallaght, Temple Street and Cork University Hospital, were invited to attend City West for a day for their food challenge.

Dr Mohammed Tariq, Consultant paediatrician, Midland Regional Hospital Portlaoise, Sonja Medan (10 years) and her mum

Dr Byrne, Consultant Allergist CHI explains that each of these families would had previously attended an allergy/general paediatric outpatient clinic at CHI, at which time an oral food challenge was advised for their child.

Prof Jonathan Hourihane, Consultant Paediatrician, CHI at Temple Street said:

“I am delighted we could avail of this great opportunity to reduce waiting lists across the two allergy clinics in Ireland.

“At their clinics in their hospitals, paediatricians who specialise in allergy can usually only carry out about four food challenges a week, with the City West facilities we’ve had the capacity to treat approximately 27 children each day.

“We expect that half of the children who attend for a Food Challenge will have an allergic reaction to the food and we want to show them that it’s not fatal.

“A lot of allergies go away and children can eat food safely here to see if they still are allergic or not.”

“Many children who are allergic to one food avoid other foods too.

“Half of the children we will see will pass the challenge for the other foods they are avoiding. We want to reduce the foods they are avoiding to one food if possible.

“For example, a child with a peanut allergy might also avoid other nuts, shellfish and fish or a child that reacted to milk, might avoid, egg, shellfish, wheat and apples.”

Prof Hourihane says many children are also carrying adrenaline autoinjectors unnecessarily while they await a professional review of their allergies. “Studies have shown that half of children who carried adrenaline auto injectors were only allergic to milk or eggs and not peanuts,” he explained.

 

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