“…Similarly, improved life expectancy among elderly patients with diabetes mellitus has resulted in more cases of neuropathy, vascular insufficiency, and the associated local complications of soft-tissue loss, bone destruction, and osteomyelitis 17,18 . To date, however, there are only a handful of epidemiological studies of osteomyelitis in the U.S., and these studies are limited to selected subsets of patients, as defined by age 19 , osteomyelitis type 20 , anatomical location 21 , or infecting organisms 22,23 . To our knowledge, there are no comprehensive epidemiological studies describing the entire spectrum of osteomyelitis in the U.S. With this background, our objective was to examine trends in the age and sex-specific incidence of osteomyelitis over a forty-one-year period from 1969 to 2009.…”