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Deficiency Diseases: Young People

Volume 498: debated on Tuesday 27 October 2009

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many cases of scurvy were reported in each local authority area in each of the last five years; and how many such cases were in persons under 18. (295601)

The figures on the number of cases of scurvy reported are not held centrally.

The number of finished consultant episodes with a primary or secondary diagnosis of scurvy is shown in the following table.

The figures provided cover those patients treated in hospital with a diagnosis of scurvy at the national level.

Count of finished consultant episodes (FCEs)1 where there was a primary or secondary diagnosis2 of ‘scurvy’3, activity in English national health service hospitals and English NHS commissioned activity in the independent sector

FCEs1

2007-08

94

2006-07

101

2005-06

68

2004-05

61

2003-04

72

1Finished Consultant Episode (FCE):

A FCE is defined as a continuous period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one health care provider. FCEs are counted against the year in which they end. It should be noted that the 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 Number of episodes in which the patient had a (named) primary or secondary diagnosis. These figures represent the number of episodes where the diagnosis was recorded in any of the 20 (14 from 2002-03 to 2006-07 and seven prior to 2002-03) primary and secondary diagnosis fields in a HES record. Each episode is only counted once in each count, even if the diagnosis is recorded in more than one diagnosis field of the record.

3 Scurvy:

ICD10 Code E54.

Source:

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), the NHS Information Centre for health and social care.