Long-term Trends in Open vs Endoscopic Carpal Tunnel Release Among the Medicare Population in the United States

Abstract

Background:

Carpal tunnel release (CTR) surgery is the most common surgery billed to Medicare by hand surgeons. As such, the purpose of this study was to evaluate trends for CTR surgeries billed to Medicare from 2000 to 2020.

Methods:

The publicly available Medicare Part B National Summary File from 2000 to 2020 was queried. For both open carpal tunnel release (OCTR) and endoscopic carpal tunnel release (ECTR), the number of procedures and total Medicare reimbursement were extracted. For year 2020, the specialty of the performing surgeon was recorded. Descriptive statistics were reported.

Results:

A total of 3 429 471 CTR surgeries were performed in the Medicare population from 2000 to 2020. For these procedures, Medicare paid surgeons over $1.23 billion. During this period, there was a 101.8% increase in annual CTR procedures (91 130 in 2000, 183 911 in 2020). Further, annual volume of ECTR increased by 456.2%, and accounted for an increasing percentage of total CTR procedures (9.1% in 2012, 25.2% in 2020). The average adjusted Medicare reimbursement per procedure decreased by 1.5% for OCTR, and decreased by 11.6% for ECTR. In 2020, orthopedic surgeons performed 85.1% of CTR procedures.

Conclusions:

The volume of CTR surgeries among the Medicare population has increased from 2000 to 2020, and ECTR is accounting for a growing proportion of surgeries. When adjusted for inflation, average reimbursement has decreased, with a greater decrease among ECTR. Orthopedic surgeons perform most of such surgeries. These trends are important to assure adequate resource allocation as treating carpal tunnel becomes more common among the aging Medicare population.