implantations per year would decrease and level off to less than one
million operations per year.^73 In essentially all cases of device
implantation, it is always a safer bet that the number of operations will
increase, not decrease.
The true number of intraocular lens implantation operations per year is
approximately 3,000,000 per year.^74 More than 99 percent of cataract
operations are on a single eye, with the second operation scheduled weeks
later.^75 Therefore, the number of American receiving lens implants on an
annual basis is roughly 1,500,000.
GENERAL SURGERYInsulin pumps, (and the blood glucose monitors with which they interface)
are not true implants, existing outside the body and connecting to the
insides via infusion setups, small devices that are perched on the skin and
have a tiny needle that crosses into the subcutaneous fat.
Prosthetic mesh is the most commonly implanted foreign material in
general surgery, used as a permanent reinforcement in hernia surgery.
There were approximately 190,000 inpatient abdominal wall surgeries in
2012, but the number of outpatient operations is vastly greater.^76 It has
been estimated that more than 80 percent of hernia repairs are performed
with mesh,^77 and there are more than 800,000 inguinal hernia operations
per year in the United States.^78 Commercial reports indicate that there are
over 500,000 abdominal wall hernia operations per year,^79 with a
combined total of 1,300,000 hernia operations per year, of which at least
one million hernia operations per year in the United States entail the use
of permanent implanted mesh.
Gastric bypass surgery has changed and grown over the last several
decades. Surgery is nothing short of a miracle for the nearly 200,000
people treated annually. The American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric
Surgery estimates that 193,000 operations for weight loss were performed
in 2014.^80 More than 75 percent of bariatric operations involve nothing
more than ingenious (crazy?) surgical transpositions of intestines and
stomach. A small percentage of large metal and polymer devices are
inserted into the belly of an obese patient, but in 2014 there were 193,000