Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what specialist aortic surgery facilities there are in the UK; and if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing more specialist aortic surgery centres.

There are currently 28 specialised cardiac surgery centres in England.

NHS England and NHS Improvement has advised that the Specialised Cardiac Improvement Programme includes a workstream on cardiac surgery, but this and previous work has not identified the need for additional surgical centres. The aim is to further develop networked centres to increase access to surgeons who have developed and can maintain particular expertise in aortic dissection surgery.