Prevalence of Vitamin D Deficiency Amongst Indian Orthopaedic Surgeons

Vitamin D deficiency is a widely prevalent condition with patients in both symptomatic and asymptomatic spectrum. With the lack of routine screening there exists an unknown population of Indian Orthopaedic surgeons who are deficient in Vitamin D and lead to an unexplained loss of quality of work and increased susceptibility to various other diseases. The easiest access to resources for supplementation is available to this group of treating physicians however its use for their personal cure is rarely recognised. This study aims to highlight this endemic disease and to find out its correlation with other parameters.

It is a prospective observational study including 150 practicing orthopaedic surgeons from entire India who visited our centre during 3 months duration for various educational meetings. Venous sample was collected after due informed consent and analysed at a single laboratory for 25-OH Cholecalciferol levels by a chemiluminescent assay. All the samples were analysed and a questionnaire was sent to the participants via google forms regarding various parameters under study.

The mean serum Vitamin D levels were 18.6 ± 9.67 ng/ml in the sample studied. 17 out of 150 participants (11.3%) were found to have sufficient serum levels of 25(OH) Cholecalciferol. 105 participants (70%) were having deficient levels and 28 (18.7%) had insufficient levels of Vitamin D. Overall 88.7% participants had Vitamin D deficiency among the sample studied.

This widespread prevalence of Vitamin D deficiency warrants frequent screening and routine supplementation of Vitamin D in orthopaedic surgeons thereby providing a low cost solution to improve the troublesome situation among healthcare providers.