About 1,260 hospital admissions a day due to smoking, new figures show

An estimated 460,000 hospital admissions in 2010/11 among people aged 35 and over were due to smoking, according to new Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) figures.

**REGIONAL DATA NOT AVAILABLE FROM THIS PUBLICATION

This is the equivalent of 1,260 admissions a day; representing one in 20 of all admissions to hospital in 2010/11.

Statistics on Smoking: England 2012 presents a broad range of information on health issues related to smoking and includes new statistics from the HSCIC’s Hospital Episodes Statistics.

They show that in 2010/11, among people aged 35 and over:

• Around 1.5 million hospital admissions had a primary diagnosis of a disease that can be caused by smoking. This number has been rising steadily from 1996/97 (1.1 million).

• 460,000 admissions were estimated as being due to smoking; which has remained broadly similar since 2006/07 (445,000). Of these:

-       126,200 had a primary diagnosis of respiratory diseases (26 per cent of all respiratory disease admissions);

-       135,400 had a primary diagnosis of circulatory diseases (15 per cent of all circulatory disease admissions);

-       160,300 had a primary diagnosis of cancer (11 per cent of all cancer admissions).

Also published today is Statistics on NHS Stop Smoking Services: England, April 2011 to March 2012. It shows that during 2011/12:

• 816,000 quit dates were set through NHS Stop Smoking Services; four per cent (29,000) higher than in 2010/11 (788,000).

• At four week follow-up, there were 401,000 instances where people had successfully quit (based on self-report), up five per cent (17,000) on 2010/11 (384,000).

• 49 per cent of quit attempts were reported as successful at four week follow up, the same as in the previous two years.

HSCIC chief executive Tim Straughan said: “These figures present in stark terms the impact smoking has on people’s individual health and NHS services.

“Together, today’s two reports give an insight into the effects of this habit in England; from those seeking help to give up and successfully quitting through NHS Stop Smoking Services; to those needing a hospital stay for a condition associated with smoking.”

Statistics on Smoking: England 2012 is at; http://www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/smoking12

Statistics on NHS Stop Smoking Services: England, April 2011 to March 2012 is at http://www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/sss1112

ENDS

1. HSCIC was previously known as the NHS Information Centre. It is England’s authoritative, independent source of health and social care information. It works with a wide range of health and social care providers nationwide to provide the facts and figures that help the NHS and social services run effectively. Its role is to collect data, analyse it and convert it into useful information which helps providers improve their services and supports academics, researchers, regulators and policymakers in their work. The HSCIC also produces a wide range of statistical publications each year across a number of areas including: primary care, health and lifestyles, screening, hospital care, population and geography, social care and workforce and pay statistics.
2. Statistics on NHS Stop Smoking Services: England, April 2011 – March 2012 presents results from the monitoring of the NHS Stop Smoking Services in England during the period April 2011 to March 2012. The report includes information on the number of quit dates set and the number of successful quit attempts at the four week follow-up. It also presents a more in depth analyses of the key measures of the service, including pregnant women, breakdowns by ethnic groups and type of pharmacotherapy received and regional analyses at Strategic Health Authority (SHA) and Primary Care Trust (PCT) levels.
3. It is possible that the same individual may make more than one quit attempt during the year.  In such instances, the data providers are asked to record the details of each quit attempt for collection and analysis purposes.   As the data is obtained via an aggregate, rather than a record-level collection, it is not possible to ascertain the number of individuals who do in fact make multiple quit attempts in the same year.  This has been the situation consistently throughout the time series, so comparisons with previous years are on a like-for-like basis.
4. A client is counted as a "successful quitter" if he/she self-reports that they have successfully quit smoking four weeks after setting a quit date. On the basis that the clinical viewpoint tends to be that a client should not be counted as a ‘failure’ if he/she has smoked in the difficult first days after the quit date, the definition allows for early relapses (within the first 2 weeks after setting a quit date) provided they have not smoked at all between the end of the first two weeks and the four week follow-up.
5. Figures relating to the number of quit dates set and number of successful attempts have been rounded to the nearest thousand.
6. Statistics on Smoking: England, 2012, combines data from different sources presenting it in a user-friendly format. It contains data and information previously published by HSCIC, Department of Health, the Office for National Statistics and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. It also includes new analyses carried out by HSCIC. The report presents information on the prevalence of smoking in adults and children, behaviours and attitudes towards smoking, as well as estimates of the number of smoking-related hospital admissions and smoking-related deaths in England.
7. For media enquiries please contact mediaenquiries@ic.nhs.uk or 0845 257 6990.

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