Interventional procedures guidance

This guidance looks at whether procedures are safe enough and work well enough for wider use in the NHS.

An interventional procedure is used for diagnosis or for treatment. It involves:

making a cut or a hole to gain access to the inside of a patient's body
For example, carrying out an operation or inserting a tube into a blood vessel.
gaining access to a body cavity without cutting
For example, carrying out treatment inside the stomach using an instrument inserted via the mouth.
using electromagnetic radiation
For example, using a laser to treat eye problems.

Notify a procedure

Anyone can tell us about a procedure for consideration. We want to know if there are:

new or not well established procedures that you think we should develop guidance on
established procedures that need to be reviewed and updated.

We look at the safety of a procedure and whether it's effective for routine use.

Our guidance lets you incorporate procedures that could provide significant health benefits into clinical practice in a responsible way.

We use OPCS-4.7

OPCS codes, or a link to them, are displayed on the overview page of guidance.

Procedures notified to us that are not currently suitable for guidance development.

Your organisation's governance lead should check if there's NICE interventional procedures guidance (IPG) for the procedure.

If an IPG exists, ensure that the procedure is done in accordance with the guidance.

If we haven't published an IPG for the procedure your organisation can still approve it as long as:

the clinician has appropriate training and experience
patients are made aware of the circumstances under which the procedure is being performed, and consent to this
arrangements are made for data collection and clinical audit.