Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many (a) children and (b) adults have been admitted to hospital with malnutrition in the last 12 months.
Data is not available in the format requested. Such data as is available is provided in the table below. This is a count of finished admission episodes (FAEs)1 with a primary or secondary diagnosis2 of malnutrition3, by patients aged 0-17 and adults aged 18 and over, for the financial year 2016-17. This is a count of hospital attendances resulting in admissions, not individual patients as the same person may have been admitted into a National Health Service hospital on more than one occasion.
Age | FAE’s |
Children (Aged 0-17) | 344 |
Adults (Aged 18+) | 7,939 |
Source: NHS Digital
Notes:
1FAEs
An FAE is the first period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. FAEs are counted against the year or month in which the admission episode finishes. Admissions do not represent the number of patients, as a person may have more than one admission within the period.
2Number of episodes in which the patient had a primary or secondary diagnosis
The number of episodes where this 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 Hospital Episode Statistics record. Each episode is only counted once, even if the diagnosis is recorded in more than one diagnosis field of the record.
3ICD-10 coding for malnutrition
E40 Kwashiorkor
E41 Nutritional marasmus
E42 Marasmic kwashiorkor
E43 Unspecified severe protein-energy malnutrition
E44 Protein-energy malnutrition of moderate and mild degree
E45 Retarded development following protein-energy malnutrition
E46 Unspecified protein-energy malnutrition
O25 Malnutrition in pregnancy
P00.4 Fetus and newborn affected by maternal nutritional disorders
P05.2 Fetal malnutrition without mention of light or small for gestational age
The presence of an ICD-10 code of malnutrition on the admission episode indicates that the patient was diagnosed with, and would therefore being treated for malnutrition during the episode of care. The cause of malnutrition is not presented here but may be due to dietary issues, an inability to absorb nutrients normally or another disease affecting the patient’s ability to feed normally.