Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people underwent laser eye surgery in the last five years.

Laser eye surgery is a very broad term and can be used to describe specific laser surgery performed for the correction of vision such as short-sightedness or any other laser procedures used to treat ophthalmic conditions such as retinal detachment or glaucoma.

Corrective laser eye surgery is not routinely provided on the National Health Service. It is usually performed by the independent sector for which we do not collect data.

The following table provided by the Health and Social Care Information Centre shows the number of finished consultant episodes (FCEs) with a main or secondary operative procedure on the eye where a laser was used in England between 2008 and 2013.

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

¹Figures do not represent the number of different patients, as a person may have more than one episode of care within the same stay in hospital or in different stays in the same year.