Discectomy waiting time at Cairns Hospital

The median wait for discectomy at this public hospital in the Cairns North area of Queensland was 42 days in 2024–25.

Reference period 2024–25 (1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025) · released 28 May 2026

These figures describe surgery that already happened, not your own wait.

Median wait: 42 days2024–25 · released 28 May 2026
Surgeries completed: 12 surgeries2024–25 · released 28 May 2026
Waited more than 365 days: not published2024–25 · released 28 May 2026 — Reported data did not meet the criteria to calculate this indicator.

Half the people who had this surgery here waited less than the median, and half waited longer. Of the 30 public hospitals that published a median wait for this surgery in 2024–25, this one sits at 15 when they are ordered from shortest median to longest. Hospitals with the same median share a rank.

The median wait here has risen from 38 days in 2016–17 to 42 days in 2024–25 — up 11% — while the national median stayed at 41 days. The nearest public hospital with a shorter published wait is Townsville University Hospital, about 288 km away, at 33 days.

Compare this near you → On the compare page, pick "Discectomy" and type your suburb to see the public hospitals within reach, ordered by their published wait. Nothing you type there is kept.

How this compares

Median wait, long waits and volume for Discectomy, 2024–25.
Where	Median wait	Waited more than 365 days	Surgeries
Cairns Hospital	42 days	not published	12 surgeries
Queensland (all public hospitals)	37 days	0.6%	483 surgeries
Australia (all public hospitals)	41 days	4.5%	1400 surgeries

Where the wait is shorter nearby

Bars show the median wait in days. The vertical line at 41 days marks the national median.

Townsville University HospitalQLD · about 288 km away33 days

Distances are straight-line, measured between hospital locations, and are approximate. The search covered 1000 km — the radius was widened because fewer than four hospitals published a figure within 250 km.

How the wait has changed

Cairns Hospital
QLD
Australia

View these numbers as a table

Median wait in days for Discectomy, by financial year. Every figure was released on 2026-05-28.
Reference period	Cairns Hospital (days)	QLD (days)	Australia (days)
2016–17	38	31	41
2017–18	16	28	42
2018–19	69	36	43
2019–20	70	43	49
2020–21	80	46	49
2021–22	78	45	49
2022–23	15	32	60
2023–24	27	37	48
2024–25	42	37	41

Public hospitals only — what these figures include and leave out.

All surgery at Cairns Hospital · Discectomy across Australia · Discectomy in Queensland