Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of people were medically treated for severe nerve pain in the last 12 months.
The following table shows a breakdown of the Finished Admission Episodes (FAEs) in England with a primary diagnosis relevant to nerve pain, as well as the total number and proportion of FAEs with a primary diagnosis relevant to nerve pain, for 2023/24:
Diagnosis | Admissions |
Disorders of trigeminal nerve | 3,005 |
Facial nerve disorders | 5,405 |
Disorders of other cranial nerves | 210 |
Cranial nerve disorders in diseases classified elsewhere | 285 |
Nerve root and plexus disorders | 1,660 |
Nerve root and plexus compressions in diseases classified elsewhere | 10,510 |
Mononeuropathies of upper limb | 47,290 |
Mononeuropathies of lower limb | 4,225 |
Other mononeuropathies | 1,770 |
Total FAEs with primary diagnosis relevant to nerve pain | 74,365 |
Total 2023/24 FAEs | 17,540,975 |
Proportion of admissions with primary diagnosis relevant to nerve pain | 0.42% |
Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), published by NHS England
Notes:
- FAEs refer to the first period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider, and are generally counted against the year or month in which the admission episode finishes, so do not represent the number of patients, as a person may have more than one admission within the period;
- the primary diagnosis is the first of up to 20 diagnosis fields in the HES data set and provides the main reason why the patient was admitted to hospital;
- the data is provisional and may be incomplete or contain errors for which no adjustments have been made, as counts produced from provisional data are likely to be lower than those generated for the same period in the final data set; and
- all counts have been rounded to the nearest five and values less than 10 have been supressed.