Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people have had spinal operations in the UK in each of the last 5 years; and how many have been successful.

Information is not held in the format requested. The information available is shown in the table below and provides a count of finished admission episodes¹ with a main or secondary spinal procedure² for the years 2012-13 to 2016-17 taken from the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) dataset. Figures do not represent the number of different patients, as a person may have more than one episode of care in the same year. Data on surgical outcomes is not collected in HES.

Notes:

¹A FAE is the first period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. FAEs are counted against the year or month in which the admission episode finishes. Admissions do not represent the number of patients, as a person may have more than one admission within the period.

²The number of episodes where the procedure (or intervention) was recorded in any of the 24 (12 from 2002-03 to 2006-07 and four prior to 2002-03) procedure fields in a HES record. A record is only included once in each count, even if the procedure is recorded in more than one procedure field of the record. It should be noted that more procedures are carried out than episodes with a main or secondary procedure. For example, patients under going a ‘cataract operation’ would tend to have at least two procedures – removal of the faulty lens and the fitting of a new one – counted in a single episode.