§ Mr. Greville Jannerasked the Secretary of State for Social Services how long he estimates the average non-urgent case requiring ophthalmic surgery has to wait after the operation has been recommended by a surgeon.
§ Sir George YoungInformation is not available in the form requested. In 1977, the average waiting time for the specialty of ophthalmology in England and Wales, based on a 1 in 10 sample, was 19.3 weeks. This figure includes both urgent and non-urgent cases; most but not all of them would have involved operations. On 30 September 1979, there was 41,021 patients in England waiting for non-urgent ophthalmological treatment in hospitals, of whom 9,913 or 24 per cent. had been waiting for more than one year.