Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress has been made on the commitments in the NHS Long Term Plan to improve the detection of heart valve disease.

NHS England and NHS Improvement are working with Health Education England to develop new e-learning to support healthcare professionals to recognise the symptoms of heart valve disease and diagnose, manage and provide care for these patients. There are currently eight training modules available, with further resources to be published in 2022

A full-time integrated training scheme leading to both a post-graduate certificate in echocardiology and level 2 British Society of Echocardiography accreditation in transthoracic echocardiograms has been developed to increase the number of cardiac physiologists. There are currently 57 trainees in the scheme with another 85 funded posts from October 2022. The National Health Service is investing in cardiac networks to support whole pathway improvements. These networks have been developed to improve prevention, diagnosis, treatment and end of life care.