NHS Digital has today released new SATOD data for Quarter 3 2016/17. The full data can be accessed here.

Key points from the data are:

• The percentage of women recorded as smokers at the time of delivery has risen slightly in the third quarter of 2016/17 to 10.6%.
• This is the same rate recorded for quarter three last year and for 2015/16 overall (10.6%). It is slightly higher than the rate recorded for quarter 2 2016/17 (10.4%), although the difference is not statistically significant.

• There were large geographical differences. Between CCGs this ranged from 2% in NHS Richmond to 26.6% in NHS Blackpool. Amongst all NHS England Regions, this varied from 16.1% in  Cumbria & North East  to 5.1% in London. This is a similar pattern to previous years.
• The quality of this data remains a cause for concern, with 2% of maternities having an unknown smoking status (compared to 1.4% in 2013/14, although this is an improvement on the 2015/16 rate of 3.1%.

To note: From April 2017 the number of maternities with an unknown smoking status will be excluded from the baseline calculations; if this was applied to the current data the overall rate would increase to 10.9%.  To aid this transition and highlight the difference this may make to rates at a local level, NHS Digital is publishing both figures during 2016/17, which can be accessed via the excel spreadsheet.