Health number of operations has risen sharply

Number of hospital treatments in Germany is increasing massively: 45 million operations in 2009

45 million operations and medical procedures were carried out in 2009 in hospitals across Germany. An increase of 7.7 percent over the previous year is worrying, according to the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden

One third of hospital treatments are surgeries
17.2 million patients were treated in a hospital in 2009, an increase of around 10 percent over the previous year. Compared with 45 million surgeries and medical interventions, there were 2.6 interventions per hospital case, but only interventions in full inpatient treatment were excluded without the use of outpatient care. The number of operations was about 14.4 million, about 700,000 or five percent more than in 2008, which corresponds to about one third of the total measure. 12.1 million non-surgical therapeutic measures, such as radiotherapy, chemotherapy, pain or nuclear medicine, as well as dressing changes and narcosis, have been initiated (26.8 percent of the total) and 9.1 million diagnostic measures ( 20.3 percent). The other medical procedures were divided into the areas of diagnostic imaging (7.8 million treatments), complementary measures such as birth-accompanying treatments (1.4 million treatments) and the administration of special medicines (0.3 million treatments).

Ranking by age, gender and type of treatment
On the basis of the data of the Federal Statistical Office, a sort of ranking according to age, gender and frequency of medical treatment can be formed. For example, in children and adolescents, cutting the eardrum to open the tympanic cavity (eg for treatment of middle ear infections) and removing the tonsils are among the most common measures. In women aged 15 to 44, surgeries were mainly related to delivery, and men of the same age group had surgery on the inferior turbinate (to treat snoring) as well as articular cartilage and menisci arthroscopic surgery most common medical treatments in the hospital. With age, however, the need for intervention is shifting, so in older women joint surgery to the implantation of hip joints as well as uterine removal played a major role, while in older men bladder surgeries and operations on the groin were in the foreground. (26.10.2010, fp)

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Picture: Lothar Wandtner