Baroness Greengross – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Greengross on 2014-05-06.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many (1) non-cancer and (2) cancer-based lymphoedema and lipoedema patients were identified by the National Health Service in each of the last three years; how many such patients were treated by the National Health Service in each of the last three years; and what was the cost of those treatments.

Earl Howe

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data does not separately identify those cases of lymphoedema that are associated with cancer from those that are not, and is unable to identify cases of lipoedema as there is no coding available for this condition, based on the tenth revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).

Further to this, HES data is not linked to costing information and therefore this information cannot be provided.

In the following table we have provided the number of finished admission episodes (FAEs) for patients with a primary diagnosis of lymphoedema from 2010-11 to 2012-13.

Note:

An FAE is the first period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. FAEs are counted against the year or month in which the admission