Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what data his Department holds on the number of cases of (a) peripheral arterial disease and (b) lower-limb amputations carried out due to the progression of that disease each year.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is largely preventable, through lifestyle changes and a combination of public health and National Health Service action on smoking and tobacco addiction, obesity, tackling alcohol misuse, and food reformulation. Prevention is key to reducing the incidence of peripheral arterial disease, and the NHS England Long Term Plan, published in 2019, has committed to several key ambitions to support the delivery of the aim to help prevent up to 150,000 heart attacks, strokes, and dementia cases by 2029, through improving care and outcomes for those individuals with CVD. This includes enhanced diagnostic support in the community, better personalised planning, and increasing access to cardiac rehabilitation.

Furthermore, NHS England commissions vascular arterial care from a number of specialist vascular arterial centres to ensure appropriate management of the disease. NHS England also commissioned a two-year Commissioning for Quality and Innovation scheme from 2022 to 2024. This scheme incentivised the adoption of the Vascular Peripheral Arterial Disease Quality Improvement Framework to support timely interventions for revascularisation. Additionally, over three-quarters of patients undergoing procedures for peripheral arterial disease in 2022 were current or ex-smokers, with approximately half of patients suffering with diabetes.

The 2023 National Vascular Registry (NVR) State of the Nation Report, which covers the United Kingdom, reports on both lower limb revascularisation for peripheral arterial disease and major lower limb amputations, and states that during 2022 there were:

• 6,432 bypass or open procedures, with 3,565 being elective and 2,867 non-elective;
• 8,031 endovascular procedures, with 5,265 elective and 2,766 non-elective; and
• the NVR received details of 3,505 major lower limb amputations across the UK.