The current neurologic burden of illness and injury in the United States.

Estimates of the need for neurologists must be based ultimately on the frequency of neurologic disease. Community-based population surveys for diseases or injuries that have come to medical attention provide annual incidence rates per 100,000 population, point prevalence rates per 100,000, and average duration in years. For 61 disorders, including for 8 only those fractions that were thought to require neurologic attention, the annual incidence rates summed to 2500 per 100,000 or 2.5% of the population. For 55 of these conditions, including for 6 only the neurologic fraction and excluding all mental retardation, blindness, deafness, or psychosis, the point prevalence rates summed to 9500 per 100,000 population. Even if we also excluded all headache, all trauma, all alcoholism, and all vertebrogenic pain states, 3.6% of the general population at any one time should be under neurologic care. Substracting all these exclusions from the incidence rates similarly leaves more than 1 person in every 100 who each year will have a new neurologic disorder that requires the attention of a physician competent in clinical neurology.