NHS Lothian operations to resume by end of week

The unit is based at Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary but serves all of NHS Lothians' hospitals

Surgeries at NHS Lothian will resume by the end of the week after a leak in a unit that sterilises surgical equipment caused the postponement of operations.

The health board had previously said it would be prioritising emergency and urgent surgery for at least two weeks.

The hospital decontamination and sterilisation unit provides sterile equipment for 60 theatres across all of NHS Lothian's hospitals.

It is based at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

Up to 400 surgical trays a day are normally processed through the facility, but the health board said sufficient capacity for these had now been secured.

• NHS Lothian operations postponed due to steriliser leak

• Read more stories from Edinburgh, Fife and East Scotland

It is understood the leak was identified in the ceiling of the unit which opened in 2010 as a centralised service.

NHS Lothian's instruments are being processed by NHS Lothian staff at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde's HSDU facility and by Steris, a national supplier.

Work to repair, test and recommission the facility is expected to take at least two to four weeks.

Tracey Gillies, NHS Lothian's medical director, apologised to those who had been affected.

She said "We are very pleased that we can now focus on re-booking those patients whose operations had been postponed and we will do so by prioritising the most urgent cases first.

"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.