After more than a half day in a Montreal ER, a university student went home to Ontario for surgery

A 20-year-old Concordia University student says he waited for 15 hours in the ER at Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital before heading west across the border to another hospital where he was diagnosed with appendicitis. 

Christos Lianos says his parents decided to take him to a hospital in his hometown of Kingston, Ont. where he had emergency surgery.

It all started in mid-June, when he says he suddenly fell sick and went to the Royal Victoria Hospital to see a doctor.

“I'm having a 40-degree fever and pain in my lower right abdomen and I think it's my appendix,” Lianos recounted to CTV.

Lianos says he was told to expect a 10-hour wait, and was twice given Tylenol for his pain.

“There were roughly 100 people in that waiting room,” he said. “I was told by one of the nurses that there were only two doctors available.”

After he spent over a dozen hours waiting, he says, his parents arrived from Kingston.

“At that point, we felt like we had hit a wall and we were getting very frustrated, my mother especially,” said Lianos.

“It got to the point where she got very frustrated with one of the nurses and they had security come up and threaten to kick us out if we didn't calm down.”

The family made the decision to drive home, and Lianos says he was admitted to the Kingston General Hospital after a four-hour wait.

Their diagnosis? “It was appendicitis, my appendix had burst,” he said.

The appendix is a small, thin pouch connected to the large intestine. If it bursts, it can lead to a type of infection inside a person’s belly called peritonitis, which can be fatal.

Lianos’s appendix was removed and he spent 10 days in intensive care to clear the infection.

‘SUFFERING HELL’: ADVOCATE

“I'm not a doctor, I'm a lawyer. As a human being, if I see someone suffering at an emergency ward, I want to take care of that person,” said Paul Brunet, a patient’s rights advocate.

“That person was suffering hell and was not given the attention needed,” he said.

In an email, the McGill University Health Network (MUHC) said the emergency department was at 197 per cent capacity that day, with over 30 patients from the previous evening still waiting to be seen. Those patients were of higher priority, or had been there longer.

“We can say ‘what if,’ but ‘would I be here today’ is a very good question,” said Lianos. “Who knows? It is very possible that I could have died in that waiting room.”

A study published in March by the Montreal Economic Institute into Quebec ER waiting times found patients at the Royal Victoria waited a median of nine hours and 55 minutes in 2022.

That stretch of time was significantly longer than what had been recorded in 2018, when the median was seven hours and 19 minutes. 

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