Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many (a) children, (b) adults up to the age of 65 and (c) adults over the age of 65 are in hospital with malnutrition.

NHS Digital has provided a count of finished admission episodes (FAE)¹ with a primary diagnosis² of malnutrition³, broken down by age bands for the financial year 2017-18⁴. This information is provided in the following table.

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), NHS Digital

Notes:

¹A finished admission episode (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 primary diagnosis is the first of up to 20 diagnosis fields in the HES data set and provides the main reason why the patient was admitted to hospital.

³ICD10 Clinical codes

"ICD10 Codes used:

Malnutrition

E40 Kwashiorkor

E41 Nutritional marasmus

E42 Marasmic kwashiorkor

E43 Unspecified severe protein-energy malnutrition

E44 Protein-energy malnutrition of moderate and mild degree

E45 Retarded development following protein-energy malnutrition

E46 Unspecified protein-energy malnutrition

O25 Malnutrition in pregnancy

The presence of an ICD-10 code of malnutrition on the admission episode indicates that the patient was diagnosed with, and would therefore being treated for malnutrition during the episode of care. The cause of malnutrition is not presented here but may be due to dietary issues, an inability to absorb nutrients normally or another disease affecting the patient’s ability to feed normally."

⁴HES figures are available from 1989-90 onwards. Changes to the figures over time need to be interpreted in the context of improvements in data quality and coverage (particularly in earlier years), improvements in coverage of independent sector activity (particularly from 2006-07) and changes in NHS practice. For example, apparent reductions in activity may be due to a number of procedures which may now be undertaken in outpatient settings and so no longer include in admitted patient HES data. Conversely, apparent increases in activity may be due to improved recording of diagnosis or procedure information.

It should be noted that Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) include activity ending in the year in question and run from April to March, e.g. 2015-16 includes activity ending between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2016.