Estimating Recent US Limb Loss Prevalence and Updating Future Projections.
Julio A Rivera, Kara Churovich, Ashley B Anderson and 1 others
PMID 39822203WHAT IT FOUND
In 2019, an estimated 2.3 million people in the US were living with limb loss, and projections put this at 5.6 million by 2060, mainly from diabetes and vascular disease.
Key findings
01An estimated 2.3 million people in the US were living with limb loss in 2019, up from 1.95 million in 2016.
02Nearly 91% of patients underwent lower extremity amputation, while 9.2% underwent upper extremity amputation.
03The model projects 5.6 million people living with limb loss by 2060, with diabetes-related limb loss rising from 1.5 million in 2019 to over 3.8 million in 2060.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The data are administrative hospital discharge records built for billing, so some procedures may be underrepresented. The analysis used a 20% sample of community hospital discharges and adjusted it to represent the population, which may not match the true population. The database excludes rehabilitation and long-term acute care hospitals, and it does not include military or VA health care systems, which have more traumatic amputations. The projections assume linear trends and do not account for future medical advances, prevention, or changes in limb salvage. The prevalence estimate depends on assumptions about life expectancy, average age at amputation, and relative risk of death.
Declared interests
The authors report no conflict of interest. The publication states that the contents are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or policies of Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, The Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, the Department of Defense, or the Departments of the Army, Navy, or Air Force.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the 5.6 million projection as a precise future count of patients. It comes from a model using administrative discharge data, linear trend assumptions, and estimates of life expectancy and death risk.