In Polish hospitals, leg amputation is performed every few dozen minutes. We are breaking European records in this respect, because the system encourages the abuse of such operations, writes Rzeczpospolita.
According to the latest data, in 2013 the National Health Fund paid for 13 amputations. That’s an average of 227 amputations a day! But according to experts, patients financed at least twice as much from their own pockets – the newspaper enumerates.
The legs are cut mainly for diabetics with the so-called diabetic foot and patients with ischemia caused by atherosclerosis.
Poland is the European leader in terms of the number of such amputations – 8 procedures per 100. inhabitants, which is 4 times more than in Denmark and 8 times more than in Spain. More than in our country, they are performed only in the war-torn Middle East.
But nowhere is this procedure so profitable for the hospital – notes the daily, calculating that its average cost is around PLN 6. PLN and it can be performed even by a novice doctor.
In addition, there is a long hospitalization and rehabilitation, so for many hospitals it is pure profit. Despite the fact that within a year of amputation, every fifth patient dies, and the survivors are paid pensions by ZUS, and this does not burden the NHF budget, emphasizes Rz.
Amputations are still a medical and social problem underestimated by decision-makers. They mean not only the high costs of prostheses and rehabilitation, but also the drama of the psyche of patients and their families. Meanwhile, many can be avoided – with appropriate conservative treatment – pharmacotherapy, physiotherapy, preventive physical exercise and surgery. We should put the greatest emphasis on early detection of the threat – said the president of the Polish Angiological Society (PTA) prof. Aleksander Sieroń from the Medical University of Silesia in Katowice.
Poland is the only country in the European Union where the number of amputations is increasing.