Justin Madders – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Justin Madders on 2016-02-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many cases of sepsis there were in children and infants under five years of age in each of the last five years.

Ben Gummer

The figures provided in the table refer only to hospital admissions and are not a count of patients as a patient may have had more than one episode of care within the same year.

Data for finished discharge episodes with a primary or secondary diagnosis of sepsis for patients aged 0 to 4 years, in each year from 2010-11 to 2014-15.

Information is not held centrally on patients diagnosed in a primary care setting.

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics, Health and Social Care Information Centre

Notes:

1. Finished Discharge Episode – A discharge episode is the last episode during a hospital stay (a spell), where the patient is discharged from the hospital or transferred to another hospital. Discharges do not represent the number of patients, as a person may have more than one discharge from hospital within the period.
2. Number of episodes in which the patient had a primary or secondary diagnosis – The number of episodes where this diagnosis was recorded in any of the 20 (14 from 2002-03 to 2006-07 and 7 prior to 2002-03) primary and secondary diagnosis fields in a Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) record. Each episode is only counted once, even if the diagnosis is recorded in more than one diagnosis field of the record.
3. ICD-10 codes for Sepsis – “A02.1 Salmonella sepsis, A20.7 Septicaemic plague, A21.7 Generalized tularaemia, A22.7 Anthrax sepsis, A26.7 Erysipelothrix sepsis, A28.0 Pasteurellosis, A28.2 Extraintestinal yersiniosis, A32.7 Listerial sepsis, A39.2 Acute meningococcaemia, A39.3 Chronic meningococcaemia, A39.4 Meningococcaemia, unspecified, A40.- Streptococcal sepsis, A41.- Other sepsis, A42.7 Actinomycotic sepsis, B37.7 Candidal sepsis, O85.X Puerperal sepsis, P36.- Bacterial sepsis of newborn,
   The following pair of codes is a dagger/asterisk code pair (D and A) which must be present together: A39.1 Waterhouse-Friderichsen syndrome, E35.1 Disorders of adrenal glands in diseases classified elsewhere.