MEN were more likely to visit Swindon’s A&E department last year than women.

New NHS figures show men made 59,845 visits to the Great Western Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s emergency wards in 2017/18, compared to women’s 55,800.

Children under nine years old were the most frequent visitors, with 17,915 attendances. Unsurprisingly, the fewest number of visits were made by those aged 90 or more. 2,400 A&E attendances were recorded.

A&E’s busiest time was between 10am and midday. Last year, around 16,400 people arrived at the emergency wards in that two hour window – more than the total number seen by A&E doctors between midnight at 8am.

Overall, GWH’s A&E appeared to be slightly less busy in 2017/18 than in previous years. Attendances were down by 6,000 compared to the previous year.

However, this month GWH executives warned they had seen an extremely busy summer in A&E. Hot weather tempted many outdoors and resulted in a rise in broken bones, said chief operating officer Jim O’Connell.

Nationally, 1.83million A&E visits were made in July, according to figures released today. In the past decade there has been a 22 per cent rise in the number of attendances.

Dr Taj Hassan, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said the figures showed that “despite the best efforts in terms of planning we will be entering autumn and winter in a very fragile state, with little room for manoeuvre unless more urgent action is taken with funding for winter”.