RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Emergency hospital admissions associated with non-communicable diseases 1998–2018 in England, Wales and Scotland: an ecological study
JF Clinical Medicine
JO Clin Med
FD Royal College of Physicians
SP e179
OP e185
DO 10.7861/clinmed.2020-0830
VO 21
IS 2
A1 Alexander J Robbins
A1 Alex J Fowler
A1 Ryan W Haines
A1 Rupert M Pearse
A1 John R Prowle
A1 Zudin Puthucheary
YR 2021
UL http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/21/2/e179.abstract
AB Background Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are increasingly prevalent and were responsible for 40.5 million deaths (71%) globally in 2016. We examined the number of NCD-related emergency hospital admissions during the years 1998 to 2018 in the UK.Methods Demographic features for those admitted as an emergency with NCDs as their primary diagnosis were collated for all admissions in England, Wales and Scotland. NCDs recorded as secondary diagnoses for all admissions in England from 2012 to 2018 were additionally recorded.Results We identified 120,662,155 emergency episodes of care. From 1998 to 2018 there was an increase from 1,416,233 to 1,892,501 in annual emergency admissions due to NCDs. This, however, represented a fall in the proportion of NCD among all emergency admissions, from 33.4% to 26.9%. Mean age of all patients admitted increased from 46.3 to 53.8 years.Conclusion Despite a fall in proportion of NCD admissions, the population acutely admitted to hospital was increasingly elderly and increasingly comorbid.