HEALTH Secretary Alan Milburn has vowed to investigate claims that a North-East man had his urgent heart operation cancelled five times.

The Darlington MP was tackled on ITV's Dimbleby programme yesterday and asked to intervene in the heart patient's plight.

Studio audience member Karl Poulsen angrily challenged Mr Milburn for earlier playing down talk of a crisis in the NHS.

Mr Poulsen, who is Conservative prospective Parliamentary candidate for Tynemouth, said: "You should have spent time with me this morning listening to the views of a man who has been on the waiting list since February.

"He's had that operation cancelled no fewer than five times, the last time on Friday morning when he was about to be wheeled into the operating theatre.

"What are you going to do to ensure that people like that aren't put through the absolute turmoil that he and his family have been, and are going to actually get their operations?"

Mr Milburn promised to look into the case and dismissed suggestions that having a heart operation cancelled five or six times was "commonplace" in the NHS.

Later it emerged that the unnamed 80-year-old heart patient, who Mr Poulsen said had written to the Health Secretary in May to raise his concerns, was admitted to Newcastle's Freeman Hospital last night in the hope of receiving his long-awaited surgery today.

"In February he was told that, at the absolute outside it would be five months," said Mr Poulsen.

During the live programme, Mr Milburn underlined his personal commitment to boosting heart treatment following the tragic death of 38-year-old Darlington man Ian Weir.

The father-of-two and friend of Mr Milburn died in June last year while waiting for a bypass operation, prompting The Northern Echo's Chance to Live campaign, calling for a dramatic reduction in waiting times for heart operations.

The Health Secretary told the Dimbleby programme that people in the North-East "know that a friend of mine went through this and sadly died because he didn't get his heart operation in time.

"That is one of the reasons precisely why we've made coronary heart disease and cancer such a priority." He stressed that "one of the very first things" he did after becoming Health Secretary was to get more heart operations, and pointed to a planned increase in the number of heart surgeons.

But Mr Poulsen said it appeared that a shortage of beds, not surgeons, had led to many of the cancellations in the case of the 80-year-old, who lives with his wife in a Tynemouth flat.

"The chief executive of the hospital trust even went round to see him on Friday to explain the problems, and even then couldn't assure him when it may be," he added.

Neither chief executive Len Fenwick nor anyone from the trust could be contacted for comment last night.

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