Temporal trends in medical device implant procedures in Australia 2008-22: evidence from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare National Hospital Morbidity database.

ObjectiveExamine the temporal trends in medical device implant procedures in the Australian population.MethodsWe used data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare from the financial years 2007-08 to 2021-22 and chose the most frequently performed medical device implant procedures. We estimated the annual change in volume of procedures and age-standardised rates by calculating the compound annual growth rate (CAGR), and used regression with the Newey-West robust variance estimator to examine whether there was a linear trend in the age-standardised rates for each procedure.ResultsFor procedures including cardiac pacemakers, heart valves, hip and knee arthroplasties, and intraocular lenses, the crude CAGR was over 3%. For the age-standardised rates, the CAGR was largest for cardiac pacemaker, followed by heart valve replacement and hip arthroplasty procedures. For some procedures, the growth was more than in the Australian population, including cardiac pacemakers (β=1.00; 95% CI: 0.14-1.86), heart valve replacements (β=0.41; 95% CI: 0.28-0.54), hip arthroplasty (β=3.50; 95% CI: 1.61-5.38), and knee arthroplasty (β=4.31; 95% CI: 0.54-8.09) procedures. The trend of standardised rates of procedures, including incisional hernia with mesh, breast implants, coronary stents, and cardiac defibrillators, grew at the same rate as the population, whereas the rate for gastric banding procedures decreased (β=-3.14; 95% CI: -4.92 to -1.34).ConclusionThe findings from the current study, showing a large increase in medical device implant procedures, will assist in future healthcare planning and efforts in post-market surveillance of safety of medical devices.