Hansard

I add my thanks to Trish Godman for securing a debate on this important but complex issue. Her motion mentions the death of Katie McPherson, and the first thing that I want to say is how much we sympathise with the McPherson family over their sad loss. We understand the family's wish to raise awareness of deep vein thrombosis to ensure that other families are spared the grief that they have been through.

The events surrounding Katie McPherson's death were investigated in detail by the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. The Scottish Government and a range of agencies have been working on taking forward the key recommendations in the ombudsman's report. Before I describe that range of work, I will say something about the number of deaths in Scotland that are associated with thrombosis—a matter to which Margaret Curran and Trish Godman referred.

The vast majority of the deaths are due to a thrombosis, or clot, in the arteries. Arterial thrombosis causes heart attacks and certain types of stroke. Coronary heart disease and stroke continue to be clinical priorities for the NHS because of the degree to which premature deaths from those causes can be prevented. We are doing a great deal of work to tackle the underlying risk factors for CHD and stroke through encouraging people to stop smoking, to adopt a healthier diet and to take more exercise. We are also refreshing our national strategy on CHD and stroke. Our keep well programme is about identifying people in our most deprived communities who are potentially at risk, so that they can be offered a health check to assess their risk of cardiovascular disease. Those initiatives relate to far and away the majority of the deaths that are associated with thrombosis in Scotland. I make it very clear that there is no question of there being more than 12,000 deaths a year associated with DVT.

DVT can cause death when a blood clot that has formed in a deep vein, usually in the leg, breaks off and becomes lodged in the lung. That kind of clot is called a pulmonary embolism. According to figures from the General Register Office for Scotland, there were 257 deaths in Scotland related to pulmonary embolism in 2007. In the same year, there were also 112 deaths in which DVT was recorded as the underlying cause of death.

A number of risks are related to developing a DVT, but the only one that is related to lifestyle is obesity. It is therefore worth mentioning that we are pursuing several measures to promote healthy body weight, which are backed up with new resources of £56 million.