Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress has been made in the NHS Long Term Plan to achieve a tenfold increase in the proportion of stroke patients who receive a thrombectomy by 2022.

The implementation of thrombectomy is part of a multi-year development programme to establish thrombectomy services across England. Thrombectomy is available in 22 centres, with another two non-neuroscience centres currently under development. There additional plans to increase the number of operators able to perform thrombectomy. Due to training requirements this is currently restricted to Interventional Neuroradiologists in England. Over the past two years there has been work undertaken with the General Medical Council to develop a credentialing programme which would enable acceleration of training to a wider cohort of medical professions such as radiologists, interventional cardiologists and neurosurgeons.