Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many eye surgeries as a result of diabetic conditions have been performed by the NHS in the last 12 months.

Data for the period requested is not yet available.

NHS Digital has been able to provide the count of finished consultant episodes (FCEs) for July 2016 - June 2017 (inclusive) where the main procedure was eye surgery with a first secondary diagnosis field recorded as diabetes.

This data is still provisional; therefore it may be incomplete or contain errors for which no adjustments have yet been made. Finalised data for the financial year 2016/17 will be available on 3 October 2017, and for the financial year 2017/18 the following year.

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), NHS Digital

Activity in English NHS hospitals and English NHS commissioned activity in the independent sector

Notes:

1. Finished consultant episodes

A finished consultant episode (FCE) is a continuous period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. FCEs are counted against the year in which they end. Figures do not represent the number of different patients, as a person may have more than one episode of care within the same stay in hospital or in different stays in the same year.

2. Secondary diagnosis

As well as the primary diagnosis, there are up to 19 (13 from 2002-03 to 2006-07 and six prior to 2002-03) secondary diagnosis fields in HES that show other diagnoses relevant to the episode of care.

3. Main procedure

The first recorded procedure or intervention in each episode, usually the most resource intensive procedure or intervention performed during the episode. It is appropriate to use main procedure when looking at admission details, (e.g. time waited), but a more complete count of episodes with a particular procedure is obtained by looking at the main and the secondary procedures.

4. Assessing growth through time (Admitted Patient Care)

HES 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.

Note that HES include activity ending in the year in question and run from April to March, e.g. 2012-13 includes activity ending between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2013.