Amputee Statistics You Ought to Know

  • Among those living with limb loss, the main causes are vascular disease (54%) including diabetes and peripheral arterial disease, trauma (45%), and cancer (less than 2%)
  • Diabetes affects 25.8 million people, 8.3% of the U.S. population.  About 1.9 million people aged 20 years or older were newly diagnosed with diabetes in 2010 in the United States.
  • Diabetes rates vary by race, ethnicity and age; with African-Americans & Native Americans at the top of the list.
  • The number of amputations caused by diabetes increased by 24% from 1988 to 2009.
  • Below-knee amputations are the most common amputations, representing 71% of dysvascular amputations1; there is a 47% expected increase in below knee amputations from 1995-2020.
  • The Amputee Coalition of America estimates that there are 185,000 new lower extremity amputations each year just within the United States and an estimated population of 2 million American amputees.
  • It is projected that the amputee population will more than double by the year 2050 to 3.6 million.
  • The estimated cost to American private & public insurance agencies is $12 billion annually4
  • As of Sept. 1, 2010, there have been 1,621 new U.S. amputee “Wounded Warriors” as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation New Dawn.
  • There are more than 1 million annual limb amputations globally -—one every 30 seconds -—is even more troubling, particularly since the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) predicts that current global prevalence of diabetes will burgeon from 285 million to reach 435 million by 2030.1
  • Estimates suggest that more than 6% of the population aged 20-79 years in EU countries, or 33 million people, have diabetes in 2010.