The looming U.S. shortage of general surgeons will grow worse as the number of new doctors entering the field is not keeping up with the growth of the nation's population – expected to hit about 439 million by 2050.

“General surgical workforce shortage in 2050 is projected to be 7,047 (21 percent) based on American Board of Surgery certificates; 4,917 (15 percent) based on General Surgery Residency completions; 5,037 (15 percent) based on combined American Board of Surgery and American Osteopathic Association certificates; and 57 (0 percent) based on hypothetical expansion of general surgeons training by 75 positions by 2021,” researchers concluded in the journal Surgery.

The shortage is up from 6,000, predicted a decade ago.

“Leaders in surgery have predicted a pending shortage in the general surgery workforce for more than 10 years,” lead study author Dr. E. Christopher Ellison of the Ohio State University College of Medicine, told Reuters.

The shortage will impact patients as “measured in the timeliness of care and the consequences of delays in care,” Ellison told the news agency.

The ideal surgeon-to-population ratio should be about 7.5 general surgeons per 100,000 individuals, according to the authors.

And some factors that might make the shortage – and surgeons' workload – worse, like an aging population, were not captured by the study.

“Patients 65 years and older are more likely to need general surgery services, and as that segment of the population increases, there will be a corresponding increase in the demands for general surgeons,” noted Ellison.

In addition, as more surgeons practice in metro areas, rural parts of the country will find the shortage impact more acute.

“Because there are high fixed costs to developing a general surgical practice in a more remotely populated area, we observe fewer practices in these areas. I wouldn’t call this a shortage per se, but I do think it’s a problem that as a society we need to figure out solutions to,” Dr. Anupam Jena of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, who wasn't part of the study, told the news agency.

Doctor shortages are a global concern. Earlier this month, a specialist group, for example, warned of coming radiologist shortages in Scotland.

“We are on red alert – there is absolutely no doubt about this,” stressed Dr. Grant Baxter, chair of the Royal College of Radiologists in Scotland, told the BBC.

“There’s a huge shortage in Scotland of radiologists, and we’re in crisis. We now have thousands of unreported scans,” he warned, adding that, “there will be patients sitting in these unreported lists who have cancer and nobody knows it. These patients may well change from having a curable cancer to having an incurable cancer.”

If the situation is not dealt with now, he added, “there simply won't be a service in the next three, four, five years.”

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