The following is a summary of “Prevalence of Stone Disease and Procedure Trends in the United States,” published in the JUNE 2023 issue of Urology by Monga, et al.
For a study, researchers sought to assess the prevalence of stone disease and analyze procedure trends among the US commercial and Medicare populations.
Retrospective analyses were conducted using the Merative MarketScan Commercial Database for the US commercial population and the Medicare Standard Analytic File (5% sample) for the Medicare population. The study included patients aged 18 and above who had encounters with a primary stone diagnosis or stone procedure (ureteroscopy [URS], percutaneous nephrolithotomy [PCNL], or shockwave lithotripsy [SWL]) between 2011 and 2019. The analyses were performed at the patient level.
The prevalence of stone disease showed a statistically significant small decrease in the commercial population (1.04% to 1.01%; P.ß<.ß0.0001) and a significant increase in the Medicare population (1.84%-2.34%; P.ß<.ß0.0001) over the study period. Procedure volumes for URS.ß increased by 22.6% in the commercial population (P.ß<.ß0.0001) and by 56.6% in the Medicare population (P.ß<.ß0.0001). Similarly, PCNL procedure volumes increased by 17.4% in the commercial population (P.ß<.ß0.0001) and 27.5% in the Medicare population (P.ß<.ß0.0001). However, there was a decrease in SWL procedure volumes by 26.9% in the commercial population (P.ß<.ß0.0001) and a non-significant decrease of 3.8% in the Medicare population.
The prevalence of stone disease showed a small decrease in the US commercial population and an increase in the Medicare population. Notably, URS and PCNL procedure volumes increased in both populations, while SWL procedure volumes decreased, although the decrease in the Medicare population was not statistically significant.
Source: goldjournal.net/article/S0090-4295(23)00313-8/fulltext