Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of introducing mandatory echocardiogram screening to identify young people aged between 18 and 35 years old at risk of cardiac arrest; and what steps his Department has taken to improve diagnosis of cardiac abnormalities in young people.

In 2015 the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) reviewed the evidence for screening for major causes of sudden cardiac death in young people between the ages of 12 to 39 and recommended that screening should not be offered.

The UK NSC will review the evidence again in 2018/19 or earlier if any new peer reviewed evidence emerges in the meantime.