TOO few patients are having their treatment as day cases in Gwent hospitals, leading to longer than necessary stays in a system struggling to cope with demand.

Despite improvements in recent months in the number of day case treatments at the Royal Gwent, Nevill Hall and Caerphilly District Miners Hospitals, the Assembly-set target for such cases is being met in just one out of seven procedures.

This is for cataracts, where 98 percent of the more than 2,500 operations carried out in a year are done as day cases, well above the 84 percent Welsh average.

In the other six targeted treatments however, day case rates are below the target and in some instances the Welsh average.

Two major problems in Gwent which make meeting the targets difficult are the lack of day surgery facilities - there are not enough to meet demand - and bed pressures, which have often in the recent past have meant that beds earmarked for day case patients have had to be occupied by medical or other surgical patients.

Increasingly, day case beds are being ringfenced, which should enable the numbers of such cases to increase, though some procedures will still be susceptible to cancellation due to a lack of beds for recovery.

Hospital bosses are hopeful that the number of day cases in arthroscopy, an orthopaedic procedure, will increase because of the opening of the new orthopaedic unit at St Woolos Hospital, although it is likely to be autumn before the benefits are felt.

Less than one-in-four arthroscopy patients in Gwent are treated as day cases, half the Welsh average and way below the 80 percent target.

The 60 percent day case target for inguinal hernia surgery is almost being met in Gwent, but its hospitals fall well short in day case rates for varicose vein and bunion surgery, laparoscopy (an abdominal procedure), and hysteroscopy (a gynaecological procedure).