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An emergency-room patient died after being denied surgery that might have saved his life at St. Mary’s Hospital — an incident that has provoked a backlash of criticism by 200 health professionals at the Côte-des-Neiges institution, the Montreal Gazette has learned.

The controversy stems from a decision by the hospital’s new administration to stop providing emergency vascular surgery recently deemed “eccentric to the mission” of the hospital that is in the midst of an aggressive cost-cutting campaign.

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The hospital staff are furious no one on the ER team was consulted about a decision with such far-reaching ramifications.

What is especially galling, say hospital staff, is that a highly regarded surgeon was on duty at St. Mary’s on the day the man walked into the ER complaining of abdominal pain. The surgeon wanted to operate but told the ER team that he was no longer allowed to perform such operations. The patient, in his mid-’70s and at that point unconscious, was turned away, transferred to an ambulance and rushed to the superhospital of the McGill University Health Centre. He arrived at the Glen site, but died before he could have the surgery.