MONDAY, May 11, 2026 (NewsDay News) — Among opioid-related and non-opioid-related hospitals, amputation rates increased from 2016 to 2022, with the largest increase among opioid-related hospitals nationwide, according to a research letter published online May 5. Annals of internal diseases.
George Karandinos, MD, Ph.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and colleagues estimated national and regional variations in amputation rates among opioid-related hospitalizations in a cross-sectional analysis of the National Inpatient Sample. Crude amputation rates were calculated per 10,000 hospitalizations, and these rates were plotted for opioid-related and non-opioid-related hospitalizations per year.
The researchers found that from 2016 to 2022, 41,010,691 patients aged 18 and older were hospitalized, 3.0 percent of which were opioid-related. For both opioid-dependent and non-opioid-dependent hospitals, crude amputation rates increased across the country and in all census tracts, with a significant increase among opioid-dependent hospitals. Nationally, crude amputation rates ranged from 55.6 to 92.3 per 10,000 opioid hospitalizations and from 58.9 to 79.7 per 10,000 hospitalizations. A difference-in-differences analysis showed a greater increase in amputation rates among opioid-related hospitals than among opioid-related hospitals nationally, in the North East and West census regions, and in the Anglo-Pacific census units (13.2, 18.4, 19.22, 19.1, 19.1, respectively). Higher rates of anatomical amputation were more common in opioid and non-opioid hospitals.
“Contamination of Street Opioids with Xylazine — α2—an agonist without approved human use associated with particularly severe lesions—may contribute to this increase in areas where it is particularly prevalent, such as the Northeast,” the authors write.
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