Digestive Diseases A-Z List of Topics and Titles : Digestive Diseases News - Spring/Summer 2009

Digestive Diseases News
Spring/Summer 2009

NIH Publishes Comprehensive Summary of Digestive Diseases Statistics

The Burden of Digestive Diseases in the United States, a report sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), provides researchers with accurate statistical information gathered from 1979 to 2004. The report, detailing a wide spectrum of disorders, informed and serves as a companion piece to the National Commission on Digestive Diseases’ long-term research plan, Opportunities and Challenges in Digestive Diseases Research.

Photograph of the publication “The Burden of Digestive Diseases in the United States.”

“Close examination of this report will reveal many interesting and provocative pieces of statistical information about trends in various digestive diseases,” said Stephen P. James, M.D., commission chair and director of the Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK).

The 180-page compendium, edited by James E. Everhart, M.D., M.P.H., director of the NIDDK’s Epidemiology and Data Systems Program, is filled with extensive charts and graphs and includes brief written summaries highlighting key points and health trends.

Report data, based on surveys of physician offices and hospitals, are arranged by chapter according to disease causality or organ system. Additional chapters address gastrointestinal endoscopy and costs associated with digestive diseases.

Trends revealed by The Burden of Digestive Diseases in the United States include the following:

  • Deaths from digestive diseases steadily decreased between 1979 and 2004 by 17 percent.
  • Deaths from gastrointestinal infections more than tripled between 1979 and 2004.
  • Ambulatory care visits for inflammatory bowel disease between 1979 and 2004 increased by almost 40 percent.
  • Colonoscopies more than doubled between 2001 and 2005 among people ages 50 to 59.
  • After a steady decline between 1979 and 1995, appendicitis hospitalizations increased 34 percent between 1995 and 2004.
  • Diverticular disease hospitalization rates increased 16.4 percent between 1996 and 2004.
  • Peptic ulcer disease hospitalization discharge rates steadily decreased between 1979 and 2004 by 51 percent.
  • Ambulatory care visits for gastrointestinal reflux disease (GERD) nearly tripled between 1992 and 2004.
  • Prescriptions for GERD represented 48 percent of all prescriptions for digestive diseases in 2004, costing $7.7 billion.

Read the full report online at www2.niddk.nih.gov/AboutNIDDK/ReportsAndStrategicPlanning/BurdenofDisease/DigestiveDiseases. To order a copy of the report, go to www.catalog.niddk.nih.gov/PubType.cfm?Type=177&CH=NDDIC.

For more information about digestive diseases, including fact sheets and easy-to-read booklets, visit www.digestive.niddk.nih.gov.

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NIH Publication No. 09–4552
July 2009