The data consist of a response to a PSD request, in which he realizes that on 31 December, 2019 there were 12,062 users waiting for surgery - 8,834 at the Ponta Delgada Hospital, 1,924 at the Hospital da Terceira and 1,304 at the Hospital da Horta.

According to the letter from the socialist executive, available on the page of the Legislative Assembly of the Azores, the person who has been waiting the longest for a surgical intervention in the archipelago has been registered since 3 January, 2012, just over eight years at the Divino Espírito Santo Hospital in Ponta Delgada.

It is a case for which the insertion of a breast implant was proposed and the process was classified as normal, but until today it has never reached the operating table, reveals the executive's document.

The PSD had submitted an application to the Azorean parliament asking the Regional Government for information on the surgical waiting lists in the region and also data on cases that exceeded the maximum waiting times defined by the Regional Health Service and which are still to be resolved.

According to the answer, in the case of Hospital de Santo Espírito, on Terceira Island, there has been a person registered since June 2013, that is, for almost seven years, waiting for a ligation and an intervention in the varicose veins of the lower limbs, but in this case, the operative procedure "has been conditioned by the patient's cancer situation".

At the Hospital da Horta, on the island of Faial, there is a patient who has been waiting since May 2015 - for almost five years - for surgery to repair a recurrent dislocation in a shoulder.

In the same letter, the Regional Government reveals that it sent a total of 386 users to other agreed entities, who did not have an adequate response in hospitals, the vast majority of them (238) in the specialty of ophthalmology and another 18 in the specialty of plastic surgery.