On Monday, a judge rejected the validity of the consultation into children’s cardiac services. That indicates there is a lot more time to locate answers to the questions posed by doctors and parents about the future of children’s respiratory care at the Royal Brompton hospital.

If the plan had proceeded in line with the choices presented in the consultation, children with asthma and other respiratory conditions would either have seen parts of their service move to Great Ormond Street or been required to go there, or to other neighborhood hospitals, for particular procedures like bronchoscopy. This was simply because the Royal Brompton would no longer have an intensive care unit for kids and it would be hazardous to conduct bronchoscopies with out 1.

I attended a meeting of parents at the hospital on Monday and there are plenty of concerns to answer.

Most substantially, there was a lack of clarity about what the alterations would mean and how they would have an effect on the top quality of care.

In principle, however, 1 factor stuck out.

That was the reality that respiratory patients are becoming treated as second-class citizens compared with cardiac patients.

The intention is to choose the future of cardiac care now and let respiratory services deal with the consequences later.

What must happen instead is that all patients – cardiac and respiratory – should have an equal input into choices about how their care is provided.