Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to increase (a) awareness among and (b) training for primary healthcare professionals of the different clinical indicators presented by (i) women and (ii) men with aortic stenosis.

The Department does not provide information on Aortic Stenosis. Local services in the National Health Service are responsible for providing information to patients on ways to reduce their risk of heart disease including Aortic Stenosis, including reference to the NHS website.

NHS England have considered research that has evidenced that women tend to present symptoms of Aortic Stenosis at an older age than men. Both men and women exhibit the same symptoms of aortic stenosis, with dizziness and breathlessness more common in women.

NHS England have recently published an adult breathlessness pathway tool for clinicians working in Primary Care. This will help support diagnosis of chronic breathlessness which is a more common symptom of Aortic Stenosis in women.

NHS England have developed and published a new heart failure and heart valve disease e-learning for healthcare (e-LfH) course for primary care and community and enable health care professionals to better recognise the symptoms of Aortic Stenosis in both men and women, and to diagnose, manage, and support heart failure and heart valve disease patient.