§ Alistair BurtTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many serious spinal cord injuries occurred in each of the last five years. [6750]
829W
§ Jacqui Smith[holding answer 15 October 200I]: I apologise to the hon. Member for the delay in responding to this question. I refer the hon. Member to the reply that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) on 5 March 2002, Official Report, column 192W.
The information requested is not collected centrally. We do, however, have some data on the incidence of spinal injury consultations, as detailed in the table:
Finished consultant episodes (FCEs1) by main diagnosis NHS Hospitals England 1996–97 to 2000–01 Spinal cord injuries1 1996–97 11,490 1997–98 11,433 1998–99 10,900 1999–2000 11,071 2000–01 10,813 1 An FCE is defined as a period of patient care under one consultant in one health care provider. Note:
1. Data in this table is grossed for both coverage and unknown/invalid clinical data, except for 1998–99 to 2001–01 which are ungrossed.
2. The figures do not represent the number of patients, as one person may have several episodes within a year.
3. The main diagnosis is the first of seven diagnosis fields in the HES data set, and provides the main reason why the patient was in hospital.