Increase in children’s allergy services in the UK
- 17 August 2022
- Healthcare News
- News
A comprehensive survey of children’s allergy services in the UK has found that the number of clinics and appointments have increased but that services vary too widely across the country.
Researchers contacted UK hospitals to find out what allergy services they offered. They sent 154 detailed surveys to the hospitals running paediatric allergy services.
They found that there has been a four-fold increase in paediatric allergy clinics and a seven-fold increase in new patient appointments over the last 15 years.
Whilst this increase in provision is a positive finding, the researchers found that there were big regional differences in the services available and a lack of national quality standards to ensure all children with allergies get high quality and consistent care.
Most services were relatively small, and some services, such as immunotherapy were only available in a limited number of clinics.
The survey also looked at the provision of patient information and found that over 50% of clinics used Anaphylaxis UK Factsheets.
The full survey, published in Clinical and Experimental Allergy can be read at:
