Wayne David – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Wayne David on 2015-02-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to improve diagnosis of hepatic encephalopathy.

Jane Ellison

Hepatic encephalopathy is an important end stage complication of liver disease. Monitoring at a national level is difficult because there is no specific code in the 10th edition of the International Classification of Diseases system (ICD10). The ICD10 guide recommends that patients with hepatic encephalopathy are classified as K72.9; hepatic failure, un-specified. Public Health England is working on raising the profile of hepatic encephalopathy with the Lancet Commission.