BACKGROUND We have assessed whether the linkage between routine primary and secondary care records provided an opportunity to develop an improved population based co-morbidity score with the combined information on co-morbidities from both health care settings. METHODS We extracted all people older than 20 years at the start of 2005 within the linkage between the Hospital Episodes Statistics,...

BACKGROUND There remains uncertainty regarding the relative importance of patient factors such as comorbidity and provider factors such as hospital volume in predicting complication rates after total hip arthroplasty (THA). PURPOSE We therefore identified patient and provider factors predicting complications after THA. METHODS We reviewed discharge data from 138,399 patients undergoing prim...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of osteoporosis associated with the aging process is anticipated to increase along with the rising aging population. Periodontitis that the most common chronic infections of humankind is considered the risk factor for osteoporosis. The aim of this study was to identify the association between osteoporosis and periodontitis using a population-based cohort. METHODS The...

Statins have pleiotropic properties that may affect the development of connective tissue diseases (CTD). The objective of this study was to compare the risk of CTD diagnoses in statin users and nonusers. This study was a propensity score-matched analysis of adult patients (30 to 85 years old) in the San Antonio military medical community. The study was divided into baseline (October 1, 2003 to ...

TO THE EDITOR—We thank Fries et al [1] and Valentin et al [2] for their comments about our study [3] and for providing their data. Although their results did not control for confounders, their experience adds to previous work showing that consultation with an infectious diseases specialist improves the management and prognosis of Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia (SAB), as reviewed in our articl...

The aim of this study is to determine the effect of comorbidity assessed by the Charlson comorbidity index (CCI) at the time of diagnosis on the outcome of antineutrophil cytoplasmatic antibody (ANCA) associated vasculitis (AAV).This is a longitudinal observational study of 30 consecutive patients with AAV who were diagnosed and followed from January 1996 to December 2011. The degree of comorbi...

OBJECTIVES To assess whether prior statin use protects against the development of Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhoea (CDAD) in hospitalized patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS A retrospective case-control study conducted in three hospitals included all hospitalized patients diagnosed with CDAD in the Internal Medicine Departments (IMDs) during a 1 year period. Subjects were determined to h...

BACKGROUND Quantifying physical activity in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is important as physical inactivity is related to poor health outcomes. This study analyzed the relationship between patients' self-reported daily walking time and relevant characteristics related to COPD severity. METHODS Pooled analysis was performed on data from four observational studies on which dail...

BACKGROUND Comorbidity measures are necessary to describe patient populations and adjust for confounding. In direct comparisons, studies have found the Elixhauser comorbidity system to be statistically slightly superior to the Charlson comorbidity system at adjusting for comorbidity. However, the Elixhauser classification system requires 30 binary variables, making its use for reporting and ana...