Glaucoma and Macular Degeneration: Medical Treatments
(asked on 13th November 2024) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of patients waiting longer than 18 weeks for treatment for (a) wet macular degeneration and (b) glaucoma in (i) England, (ii) Merseyside and (iii) Liverpool.
The classification codes required to identify pathways where patients may have glaucoma or macular degeneration do not allow for distinction between the two conditions.
The following table provides an estimate of the number of patients who have been waiting longer than 18 weeks for treatment specifically for wet macular degeneration and glaucoma in England, Merseyside, and Liverpool, via the latter’s integrated care boards (ICBs), as a snapshot for the week ending 10 November 2024, extracted on 15 November 2024:
| Number of pathways greater than 18 weeks | ||
England | Cheshire and Merseyside ICB | NHS Liverpool Sub ICB | |
Glaucoma or macular degeneration | 765 | 61 | 7 |
Source: Waiting List Minimum Data Set (WLMDS), NHS England.
However, these figures may include patients that also have other conditions, as full coding for glaucoma and macular degeneration procedures requires diagnostic codes that are not available in the WLMDS.
The WLMDS is weekly management information that is subject to less validation than the monthly official statistics. There may be issues regarding the quality and completeness of the recorded data, which is not routinely reviewed centrally.