Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what representations his Department has received following recommendations from NICE on NHS England adopting a commissioning policy for MR-guided focused ultrasound for essential tremor; and if he will make a statement.

In June 2018, the National Institute for Heath and Care Excellence (NICE) developed interventional procedure guidance on ‘Unilateral MRI-guided focused ultrasound thalamotomy for treatment-resistant essential tremor’. NICE’s interventional procedures guidance looks at whether procedures are safe enough and work well enough for wider use in the National Health Service.

Due to limited evidence on efficacy, NICE’s guidance recommends that this procedure should not be used unless there are special arrangements for clinical governance, consent and audit or research.

A search of the Department’s Ministerial correspondence database from 1 January 2017 to 25 July 2019 has identified four items of correspondence received on the MR-guided focused ultrasound for essential tremor. This figure represents correspondence received by the Department’s Ministerial correspondence unit only.