§ Mr. WorthingtonTo ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) what guidelines the Government follow in deciding the amount of cardiac surgery to fund; and whether the amount of cardiac surgery being undertaken in Glasgow is above or below those guidelines;
967W(2) whether Government funding for heart surgery in Greater Glasgow allows operating units to work to full capacity.
§ Lord James Douglas-HamiltonThe Department of Health, in 1986, set a national guideline of a minimum of 300 coronary artery bypass grafts per million population and the guideline in Scotland is 350 per million. The current level of CABGs is substantially above that level at 436 per million. CABGs represent the large majority of cardiac surgery operations.
The contracts with both the Glasgow royal infirmary NHS Trust and the West Glasgow Hospitals University NHS Trust are worth £11 million in 1994–95 and will enable 1,800 cardiac procedures to be carried out.