What is Driving a 219% Increase in Tricuspid Heart Valve Diagnoses in Germany?

The Insurance Collaboration’s research team analyzes publicly available hospitalization data from Germany to evaluate health trends since the COVID-19 pandemic. One significant increase that jumped out to our expert team is the rise in tricuspid heart valve diagnoses since 2020.

Tricuspid Heart Valve Trend

In analyzing case counts from the first three quarters of each year, tricuspid valve diagnoses have increased 219% in 2024 compared to 2020. Dr. Edward Loniewski, medical advisor at ICSL, provides some insight for the function of the tricuspid valve: “the tricuspid valve is a complex three leafed valve (hence the name of TRI) and it regulates the flow of unoxygenated blood coming back from the large veins and pushing this into the lungs to become oxygenated. If the blood flow through the lungs is compromised such as with inflamed lung tissue or clogged blood flow in the very tiny capillaries in the lungs called the alveoli, this causes back pressure on the tricuspid valves and resultant failure of the valve.  Thus, if the blood has problems going through the filtered capillaries of the lung, that same blood probably has problems going through the blood supply of the hip and knee resulting in fractures and arthritis.”

Source: Cleveland Clinic

Other notable medical conditions that seem to be elevated through the first three quarters of 2024 are Gonarthrosis (arthrosis of knee), pneumonia and coxarthrosis (arthrosis of hip). Dr. Loniewski, an orthopedic specialist, notes that “in orthopedic research, there is a well-known link between blood flow and hip fractures.  The more tenuous the blood flow to the femoral neck (the most common area of hip fractures) the higher the risk of fractures. The femoral neck is actually considered "the barometer of the body" for blood flow.  What this means is that when the blood flow to critical organs and vessels are slowed down, the femoral neck is much more likely to fracture.”

INEK German Hospitalizations Case Count Analysis

CDC Mortality Data

Increases in cardiac and circulatory morbidity are consistent with ICSL's analysis of U.S. CDC mortality data. Elevated underlying causes of death in CDC data include substantial increase in hypertension (high blood pressure), rheumatic heart disease, and cerebrovascular (strokes).

ICSL CDC Wonder Mortality Data

Cardiac Test Panel

In partnership with Ulta Lab Tests, The Insurance Collaboration testing page includes a panel of cardiovascular system biomarkers. These tests include troponin, D-Dimer, hs-CRP, and NT-proBNP. Test panels are available with the ICSL website link in 47 states (excluding New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island).

If you have additional medical research or insight into elevated cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, please contact us on our website to join our mission to save lives and mitigate insurer loss. A special thank you to Patrick Dooley and Mary Pat Campbell for their analytical expertise and leadership in uncovering these trends in German hospitalizations.

ICSL Volunteer Spotlight

Source: The Institute for the Hospital Remuneration System GmbH (InEK GmbH) provides the InEK DataBrowser and is free of charge to interested users. The InEK DataBrowser – An application for researching anonymous German hospital case data (https://datenbrowser.inek.org/)