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WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES BY DEPUTY T.A. VALLOIS OF ST. SAVIOUR
ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON TUESDAY 16th APRIL 2013
Question
Would the Minister provide statistics on the number of patients who have been diagnosed with irritable bowel diseases such as Crohns Disease and Ulcerative Colitis in the last ten years and advise whether the Hospital has identified an increase or trend in this particular area?
Answer
Unfortunately, the department only has data from 2009 onwards and is not, therefore, able to provide 10 years of relevant information.
The data provided, relates only to in-patient care, as out-patient episodes are not clinically coded - this is in line with standard practice in the NHS
Table of total patient numbers since data collation started:
Condition | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 |
Crohn's Disease | 58 | 69 | 89 | 75 |
Colitis | 64 | 58 | 75 | 80 |
The number of individual patients receiving in-patient care, with these conditions as primary diagnosis are shown here. However, not all of these patients are necessarily newly diagnosed, as the same patient may have received in-patient care across more than one, or even all four, years.
This level of data is insufficient for the department to draw any statistically robust conclusions about potentials trends. Anecdotally, however, Consultants believe there is an average of between 12-14 newly diagnosed patients each year, and this has not shown any significant change.