Using Epidemiology to Determine Surgical Needs in Low-Resource Settings

Maine et al¹ have published the next step necessary to define the burden of surgically amenable conditions in low-resource settings.¹ Over the last decade, there has been a rapid proliferation of interest in “global surgery,” as most recently reflected by the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery.² Plaguing this movement has been a lack of robust, on-the-ground epidemiologic data describing the true denominator: the number of people who might benefit from surgical intervention—the unmet surgical need.