Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 14 March 2023 to Question 147423 on Heart Diseases: Screening, whether the National Screening Committee’s next review of the screening programme for sudden cardiac arrest will assess developments in the availability of treatments for conditions which may lead to sudden cardiac death.

The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) has started work to look at screening for cardiac conditions associated with sudden cardiac death in the young, with work currently in the preliminary stages to scope the review. As per the UK NSC’s process the review will look at addressing areas of uncertainty as identified in the 2019 review which includes the development of specific evidence-based guidelines to describe the treatment and lifestyle advice that should be offered to asymptomatic people and their families with a diagnosis of a condition that may cause sudden cardiac death. In the meantime, the UK NSC encourages researchers and stakeholders to have their work in sudden cardiac death peer reviewed and published for the UK NSC to consider its findings.