STUDY OBJECTIVE Assess associations between short-term exposure to gaseous pollutants and asthma hospitalisation among boys and girls 6 to12 years of age. DESIGN A bi-directional case-crossover analysis was used. Conditional logistic regression models were fitted to the data for boys and girls separately. Exposures averaged over periods ranging from one to seven days were used to assess the e...

INTRODUCTION Older persons are likely to develop functional impairment following hospitalisation. Several studies in the West have examined the factors associated with functional decline following the older person's discharge from hospital but there are little data on Asian populations. This study aims to look at the associated risk factors in our local population, following admission to an acu...

BACKGROUND Hospitalisation of nursing home residents might lead to deteriorating health. AIM To evaluate physical and psychological factors associated with hospitalisation risk among nursing home residents. DESIGN Prospective study with three years of follow-up. METHODS Four hundred and twenty-nine Swedish nursing home residents, ages 65-101 years, from 11 nursing homes in three municipal...

Published data on hospitalisation rates tend to reveal marked spatial variations within a city or region. Such variations may simply reflect corresponding variations in need at the small-area level. However, they might also be a consequence of poorer accessibility to medical facilities for certain communities within the region. To help answer this question it is important to compare these varia...

OBJECTIVE Determining Costa Ricans' behaviour patterns when using health services. METHODS The Costa Rican Health Survey was used. Central tendency, dispersion, percentages, frequencies, Ji-Square and Kruskal-Walis test measurements were analysed. RESULTS Area of residence and income level were the predisposing factors in both out-patient and emergency services whereas educational level was...

OBJECTIVES To describe the hospitalisation patterns in children with intellectual disability (ID) and/or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) after the first year of life and compare with those unaffected. DESIGN Prospective cohort study using data linkage between health, ID and hospitalisation population-based datasets. SETTING Western Australia. PARTICIPANTS 416 611 individuals born between 1...