Age- and gender-related prevalence of multimorbidity in primary care: the Swiss FIRE project.

ABSTRACT:

Background

General practitioners often care for patients with several concurrent chronic medical conditions (multimorbidity). Recent data suggest that multimorbidity might be observed more often than isolated diseases in primary care. We explored the age- and gender-related prevalence of multimorbidity and compared these estimates to the prevalence estimates of other common specific diseases found in Swiss primary care.

Methods

We analyzed data from the Swiss FIRE (Family Medicine ICPC Research using Electronic Medical Record) project database, representing a total of 509,656 primary care encounters in 98,152 adult patients between January 1, 2009 and July 31, 2011. For each encounter, medical problems were encoded using the second version of the International Classification

SUBMITTER: Rizza A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3557138 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature