Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many NHS trusts have reported patient incidents involving stereotactic radiosurgery or stereotactic radiotherapy; what the nature was of each such incident; and what kind of radiotherapy machine was involved in each such incident.

The National Reporting and Learning System identified five incidents over the past two years, which had been reported by three different National Health Service trusts.

Three incidents were reported in 2013 of the following nature:

Intra-procedural problem: stereotactic radiotherapy

- Treatment dosage issue (reported as no harm)

Intra-procedural problem: stereotactic radiosurgery

- Localisation markers not correctly placed (reported as no harm); and

- Beam positioning issue (reported as no harm).

Two incidents were reported in 2014 of the following nature:

Intra-procedural problem: stereotactic radiotherapy

- Beam positioning issue (reported as low harm); and

- Near miss wrong side stereotactic radiotherapy treatment due to transcription error (reported as no harm).

None of these incidents gave details of the machine involved.