Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many children under 18 years old have had gastric band operations in each of the last 5 years.

NHS Digital has provided a count of finished admission episodes¹ (FAE) where the patient was aged 17 or under and a primary diagnosis² of obesity was recorded alongside a main or secondary operative procedure³ of bariatric surgery for the years 2012-13 to 2016-17⁴. This information is provided in the table below.

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), NHS Digital

Notes:

¹A FAE is the first period of inpatient 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 inpatients, as a person may have more than one admission within the period.

²The primary diagnosis is the first of up to 20 diagnosis fields in the HES data set and provides the main reason why the patient was admitted to hospital.

³The number of episodes where the procedure (or intervention) was recorded in any of the 24 procedure fields in a HES record. A record is only included once in each count, even if the procedure is recorded in more than one procedure field of the record. It should be noted that that more procedures are carried out than episodes with a main or secondary procedure. For example, patients undergoing a ‘cataract operation’ would tend to have at least two procedures – removal of the faulty lens and the fitting of a new one – counted in a single episode.

⁴HES figures are available from 1989-90 onwards. Changes to the figures over time need to be interpreted in the context of improvements in data quality and coverage (particularly in earlier years), improvements in coverage of independent sector activity (particularly from 2006-07) and changes in NHS practice. For example, apparent reductions in activity may be due to a number of procedures which may now be undertaken in outpatient settings and so no longer include in admitted patient HES data. Conversely, apparent increases in activity may be due to improved recording of diagnosis or procedure information.

It should be noted that HES include activity ending in the year in question and run from April to March, e.g. 2012-13 includes activity ending between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2013.