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The Global Burden of Surgical Disease

  • Geriatric Trauma (F Luchette, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose of review

This review explores ongoing efforts to document the global burden of surgical disease. The chapter recaps the theoretical basis for surgical disease burden measurement. It then focuses on the indirect and direct epidemiology of surgical disease throughout the world, with a particular focus on global and low- and middle-income country (LMIC) work.

Recent findings

This review will focus on the results of peer-reviewed publications concerning surgical burden epidemiology from the last 5 years. It will demonstrate the multiple attempts to define which surgical conditions should be treated to meet high unmet needs for surgical care. It will also describe the results of modeling, field epidemiology, and alternate methods for assessing global, regional, and country burdens of surgical disease.

Summary

Many people in the LMICs live without access to sufficient surgical care. Research from the past 5 years has begun to define this unmet need.

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References

Papers of particular interest, published recently, have been highlighted as: • Of importance •• Of major importance

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Trauma, Burns and Surgical Critical Care, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 75 Francis Street, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Peter Bendix & Joaquim M. Havens

  2. Center for Surgery and Public Health, Department of Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 1 Brigham Circle, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Joaquim M. Havens

Authors
  1. Peter Bendix
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  2. Joaquim M. Havens
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peter Bendix.

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Conflict of Interest

Drs. Bendix and Havens declare no conflicts of interest relevant to this manuscript.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Geriatric Trauma

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Bendix, P., Havens, J.M. The Global Burden of Surgical Disease. Curr Trauma Rep 3, 25–31 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40719-017-0070-6

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