Nearly 19,000 operations at Mater Dei in its first six months

A total of 18,824 surgical operations were carried out at the new Mater Dei Hospital between its opening last November and the end of May.

Only 18.5 per cent were emergency operations, with the rest considered as elective, statistics from the hospital's Clinical Performance Unit show.

More than 36,500 patients were admitted to the hospital between November 12 - the day that the first inpatient was wheeled into the hospital - and the end of May. Almost a quarter of patients were day cases.

The figures show a staggering 153,577 outpatient appointments, with 44,311 of them considered as new cases. The figures show that almost 60,000 patients were seen by the Admission and Emergency Department between the time that this department moved to Mater Dei Hospital on November 19 and the end of May.

The highest number - over 13,500 - was deemed the lowest level of urgency according to the triage priority coding used by the department. This is more than double the 6,450 cases deemed of highest priority.

But the figures also listed more than 10,000 cases as "not specified" while another 12,102 bypassed triage. The latter include patients taken to the department by ambulance as well as those who were referred to Casualty from a ward or the Outpatients Department.

Around 4,400 paediatric cases were also seen at the emergency department.