ANA Discussion Forum
Useful Information => AN Research => Topic started by: jenhenho on January 08, 2026, 11:45:57 AM
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Hi all! I'm wondering how many surgeries per year for AN are performed in the U.S.
Thanks in advance!
p.s. I'm 6 weeks post retro-sig and doing GREAT! The prep and waiting was the hardest part for sure!
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I tried to look for an answer but it doesn't seem like it's something that is being tracked. All I could come up with was that there are about 3000 cases per year, and about 70 percent of those never make it out of watch and wait because they either don't grow, or even shrink. Using those numbers that means that approximately 900 get some kind of treatment, but that is both radiation, and surgery together. I couldn't find a breakdown of how many choose one option over the other, but it seems like radiation is more popular than surgery, so my guess is that there probably isn't any more than 400 surgeries a year nationwide, and maybe less than that, but that is just using the numbers being circulated around, and applying the math and estimating. Far from an actual accurate number, but probably not too far off. But I could be wrong.
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Thank you for responding! I appreciate your effort - and your math! haha
I posted Chat Gpt response below - just another guesstimate. It's confusing to me that it is so hard to get actual number. Hopefully an expert who sees this post can chime in...
FROM CHAT-GPT: ~1,700–2,000 (estimated)
Incidence: Vestibular schwannomas (acoustic neuromas) occur in roughly 2,500–3,300 people annually in the U.S., based on incidence estimates of about 1.0–1.2 cases per 100,000 population per year and U.S. population figures.
🔪 Surgical Volume — The exact number of surgeries each year isn’t universally tracked in a single report, but large retrospective analyses provide good estimates:
A national analysis of surgical trends from 2001–2014 found that annual surgical resections for vestibular schwannoma declined from about ~2,807 procedures in 2001 to ~1,795 in 2014.
That suggests recent years likely see on the order of about ~1,700–2,000 surgical resections per year in the U.S., given stable incidence but increasing use of non-surgical treatments (e.g., radiosurgery).
Older surgical outcome studies and registries also support similar annual volumes in the low-thousands during earlier decades, consistent with the above trend.
📌 Key Points
Total new acoustic neuroma diagnoses per year in the U.S.: ~2,500–3,300.
Estimated surgical resections per year: ~1,700–2,000 (based on historical surgical volumes and declining trends).
Not every diagnosed patient undergoes surgery—many are managed with observation or radiotherapy, especially for small tumors.
📊 Summary Estimate
Metric Approximate Annual U.S. Count
Vestibular schwannoma diagnoses ~2,500–3,300
Surgical resections performed
~1,700–2,000 (estimated)
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ANA doesn't track this information -Forum Moderator
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Hi Jen, in checking with the ANA regarding your question, tracking the number of people diagnosed per year is easier than tracking number of surgeries. Please remember that ChatGPT and other AI forms of information are not reliable. I think individual surgical institutions (too many to count) would need to supply from their own in-house database.