Officials are still seeking an explanation for the sterilization problem plaguing Halifax’s QEII hospital, which resulted in more surgery cancellations on Tuesday.

More than 300 surgeries have been cancelled over the past two weeks after hospital staff noticed a fine black dust on sterilized surgery equipment.

The problem has persisted, but officials still don’t know what the substance is or what to do about it.

“We have brought in specialists from other parts of the country. Steris has brought in one of their top specialists,” said Paula Bond, a vice-president with the Nova Scotia Health Authority.

“We still don’t have the exact cause.”

The situation has impacted hundreds of patients, like Jim Murphy, who came within minutes of getting the leg surgery he’s waited more than a year for.

The surgery was confirmed and Murphy and his wife, Janet, arrived at 7 a.m. on Tuesday at the QEII.

They waited four hours. Jim was dressed in a hospital gown and staff even took a black marker to his leg for the surgeons’ benefit.

All that was left was to get on a gurney.

“Then the surgeon came out and said you’re a victim of the sterilization problem and we have to cancel your surgery, we can’t do it,” Jim recalled.

Even though he was told the surgical instruments are prepackaged for an operation, perhaps weeks in advance, that didn’t seem to help.

“They opened it up and there were specks on the equipment,” Jim said.

Jim and Janet both arranged for time-off from work for the procedure, and now they are frustrated.

“They just cancelled it. When you cancel, do you know what that means … do you stop and think what it means to the people that you’re talking to,” Janet said.

They’re also concerned about how much longer they’ll have to wait this time around.

“You know the backlog of orthopedic surgeries. Ridiculous. And this is just adding and adding to it,” Janet said.

Bond said she expects the problem to continue for at least another week before a solution is found.

She said she’s grateful other hospitals are pitching in to help sterilize instruments, but she said the surgeries themselves cannot be moved to other hospitals in the area.

“Part of the problem is the bed utilization,” she said.

“In some of the other hospitals, for instance Dartmouth General Hospital, they don’t have the bed capacity,” she said.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Rick Grant