Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many congenital heart disease surgery cases there were in (a) 2000-01 and (b) 2015-16; and how many of those cases in each time period resulted in a fatality.

The National Congenital Heart Disease Audit run by the National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research (NICOR) began collecting data in 2000-01 and at that stage the 2000-01 data was based on paediatric cases only. There are no reliable data from before that period.

In 2000-01 there were 4,105 paediatric surgical procedures and 227 deaths had occurred by 30 days after surgery.

NICOR have provided the following breakdown of 2013-16 procedures which is due to be published in full later this month.

In 2013-16 there were 32,033 procedures and 663 deaths had occurred at 30 days.

Of these, 22,930 were paediatric procedures and of that total 570 deaths had occurred at 30 days.

The Audit reports on three years’ figures due to the relatively small number of cases involved with a large number of different procedures, and in order to minimise the risk of identifying individuals.