In 1994, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sponsored a publication “Digestive Diseases: Epidemiology and Impact.  In 2008, the NIH felt that the time was right to generate a new report to capture the impact of digestive diseases in the United States.  The time was right because of the continuing changes and prevalence of digestive diseases, important changes in healthcare, and the availability of new statistical resources.

In 2004, there were 236,000 deaths in the United States with a digestive disease as the underlying cause, which represented 9.8% of all deaths.  Summary data for individual digestive diseases are shown in the report, but there were five diseases that caused more than 10,000 deaths each.  These were liver disease and four cancers, led by colorectal cancer.  Close examination of this report will reveal many interesting and provocative pieces of statistical information about trends in various digestive diseases.

In addition, the Fiscal 2005 appropriations bills called for the creation of a National Commission on Digestive Diseases and tasked it with addressing the burden of digestive diseases and developing a long-range research plan.  The research plan can be accessed at http://NCDD.niddk.nih.gov.

The complete report,  ‘The Burden of Digestive Diseases’, can be accessed here at  NIDDK’s website.

Source: [Author(s). Chapter title. In:] Everhardt JE, editor. The burden of digestive diseases in the United States. US Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2008; NIH Publication No. 09-6443 [pp. - ].