Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people have been diagnosed with gout in each of the last five years.

This information in not available in the format requested.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre has advised that it is not possible to provide information on the number of people with gout who then subsequently develop arthritis in their joints as it not possible to determine this information using the coding system in the Hospital Episode Statistics database.

In the following table, we have provided information concerning the number of finished admission episodes (FAEs)¹ with a primary diagnosis² of gout³ for the years 2008-09 to 2012-13⁴.

Activity in English NHS Hospitals and English NHS commissioned activity in the independent sector

Notes:

1. A finished admission episode (FAE) is the first period of inpatient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. FAEs are counted against the year 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 year.
2. The primary diagnosis is the first of up to 20 (14 from 2002-03 to 2006-07 and 7 prior to 2002-03) diagnosis fields in the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data set and provides the main reason why the patient was admitted to hospital.
3. Code used to identify gout was “gout”.
4. HES 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, changes in activity may be due to changes in the provision of care.

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), Health and Social Care Information Centre