Hundreds of patients across Bristol had their hospital operations cancelled at the last minute, the Government has revealed.

In the last three months of last year 258 planned operations were cancelled on the day they were due to take place by University Hospitals Bristol NHS Trust, which runs the Bristol Royal Infirmary and other city centre hospitals, while 163 were cancelled by North Bristol NHS Trust, which runs Frenchay and Southmead.

The Department for Health admits that it causes distress to make the 11th-hour changes. Operations cancelled for non-clinical reasons must be rescheduled within 28 days but almost 50 patients across the two trusts were left for longer.

Weston Area Health Trust cancelled 16 appointments during the last three months of 2008 and all of those were then seen within one month.

In many cases patients involved had already turned up to hospital.

The figures do not include cancelled minor operations for outpatients.

But the region was beating hospital waiting time targets, with just one patient, registered at Bristol PCT, not seen during the 26-week government target.

UHBristol spokeswoman Helen Jackson said: "The decision to cancel any patient for any procedure is taken extremely seriously but is sometimes unavoidable because of the need to manage emergency patients requiring beds on a day-to-day basis."

No one from North Bristol NHS Trust was available for comment.