A number of non-urgent operations have been cancelled across Forth Valley as the local health board struggles to cope with a significant staff shortage.
Bosses at NHS Forth Valley say they expect this to be the case for at least six weeks and will do everything they can to reschedule appointments
Almost 300 workers at Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Larbert are off due to coronavirus and self-isolating.
This temporary measure has been put in place to help protect vital emergency, cancer care and other critical health services.
It's also being done to free up capacity to deal with an anticipated increase in the numbers of patients who may require to be admitted to hospital with coronavirus related illnesses.
Cathie Cowan, Chief Executive of NHS Forth Valley, said that staff had worked hard to try to avoid taking this action but that it was necessary to protect critical health services.
She explained: "Increasing capacity and Covid related staffing pressures are placing additional strain on already over-stretched local health and care services and we expect these pressures to intensify over the next few weeks.
"We have therefore taken the difficult decision to postpone some non-urgent operations in order to maintain critical health services.
"This will free up staff to support areas experiencing significant staffing shortages and increase the number of inpatient beds available to ensure patients who are seriously unwell can continue to receive the vital care they need.
"I know that this decision will be very disappointing and I would like to apologise to local patients who have had their operation postponed.
"Everything possible will be done to reschedule the operations affected as quickly as possible and we also plan to review capacity on a weekly basis so that we can restart activity sooner if it is possible to do so."
