Aging population creating higher demand for surgery

A UCLA study predicts surgeon shortages in ophthalmology and cardiology and urges doctors to work even more efficiently.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. Aug. 25, 2003.

An expanding aging population will create a shortage of physicians in most surgical specialties, according to the author of a new study published in the August Annals of Surgery.

By 2020 primary care doctors may find it hard to get their patients in to see an ophthalmologist or cardiothoracic surgeon if the predictions of David Etzioni, MD, hold true.

Those performing the surgeries and managing surgical facilities will need to find ways to work more efficiently, he said, since it takes eight to 14 years to train a surgeon.

"Over the next 20 years it will become increasingly difficult to find a surgeon," Dr. Etzioni said. "There will be an increase in demand greater in scale than whatever increases in supply may be occurring."

Dr. Etzioni, a general surgeon at University of California, Los Angeles, and lead author of the study, "The Aging Population and Its Impact on the Surgery Workforce," predicts the sharpest increases in demand will be in ophthalmology and cardiothoracic surgery, which will see 47% and 42% increases in demand respectively by 2020, compared with 2001.

He based his findings on U.S. Census Bureau expectations that the number of people older than 65 will jump 13.3% by 2010 and 53.2% by 2020 to 53.7 million, as baby boomers age and life expectancies lengthen.

Data on age-specific surgery rates came from the 1996 National Hospital Discharge Survey and the National Survey of Ambulatory Surgery.