Malnutrition
(asked on 13th October 2023) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many hospital admissions for malnutrition in England were there in the latest period for which data is available, broken down by age groups (a) 0-5 years, (b) 5-10 years, (c) 10-16 years and (d) over-16 years.
The following tables show activity in National Health Service hospitals and NHS-commissioned activity in the independent sector in England. NHS England has provided a count of Finished Admission Episodes with a “primary” or “primary or secondary diagnosis” of scurvy, rickets, vitamin D deficiency and malnutrition by age group for 2022/23.
| Primary Diagnosis | |||
Patient Age (years) | Scurvy | Rickets | Vitamin D Deficiency | Malnutrition |
0-4 | 1 | 29 | 47 | 12 |
5-9 | 3 | 4 | 21 | 8 |
10-16 | 1 | 2 | 60 | 24 |
17 or over | 9 | 2 | 752 | 741 |
Primary or Secondary Diagnosis | ||||
Patient Age (years) | Scurvy | Rickets | Vitamin D Deficiency | Malnutrition |
0-4 | 5 | 317 | 2,052 | 71 |
5-9 | 5 | 30 | 1,757 | 45 |
10-16 | 5 | 56 | 5,251 | 153 |
17 or over | 151 | 77 | 176,317 | 10,301 |
Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), NHS England
The root causes of malnutrition may be clinical (for example disease-related), social and/or economic. These problems often interact in a complex cycle. Some health conditions can lead to malnutrition including eating disorders, although malnutrition itself is not an eating disorder.