MP's Questions

Mr. Sheerman: To ask the Secretary of State for

Health what the incidence of cardiovascular failure in

children was in the latest period for which figures are

available.

 

AnnKeen: The numbers of finished consultant episodes

in English national health service hospitals or in independent

hospitals but commissioned by the NHS in England

where the primary diagnosis was cardiovascular failure

for children for 2007-08, the last year for which figures

were available were as in the following table.

Age group Number of episodes

Under 16 244

16 to 18 25

Notes:

Finished Consultant Episode (FCE)

1. A finished consultant episode (FCE) is defined as a continuous

period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one

health care provider. FCEs are counted against the year in which they

end. The figures do not represent the number of different patients, as

a personmay have more than one episode of care within the same stay

in hospital or in different stays in the same year.

Primary diagnosis

2. The primary diagnosis is the first of up to 20 (14 from 2002-03 to

2006-07 and seven prior to 2002-03) diagnosis fields in the FCE

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data set and provides the main

reason why the patient was admitted to hospital.

3. The ICD-10 codes used to identify Cardiovascular failure are as

follows:

I50.0 Congestive heart failure

I50.1 Left ventricular failure

I50.9 Heart failure, unspecified

I11.0 Hypertensive heart disease with (congestive) heart failure

I11.0 Hypertensive heart and renal disease with (congestive) heart

failure

I11.0 Hypertensive heart and renal disease with both (congestive)

heart failure and renal failure

P29.0 Neonatal cardiac failure

Data quality

4. HES are compiled from data sent by more than 300 NHS trusts and

primary care trusts in England. Data is also received from a number

of independent sector organisations for activity commissioned by the

English NHS. The NHS Information Centre for health and social

care liaises closely with these organisations to encourage submission

of complete and valid data and seeks to minimise inaccuracies and

the effect of missing and invalid data via HES processes. While this

brings about improvement over time, some shortcomings remain.

Ungrossed data

5. Figures have not been adjusted for shortfalls in the data, i.e. the

data are ungrossed.

Source:

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), The NHS Information Centre for

health and social care