Symptom patterns and health service use of women in early adulthood: a latent class analysis from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Symptoms can be strong drivers for initiating interaction with the health system, especially when they are frequent, severe or impact on daily activities. Research on symptoms often use counts of symptoms as a proxy for symptom burden, however simple counts don't provide information on whether groups of symptoms are likely to occur together or whether such groups are associated with different types and levels of healthcare use. Women have a higher symptom burden than men; however studies of symptom patterns in young women are lacking. We aimed to characterise subgroups of women in early adulthood who experienced different symptom patterns and to compare women's use of different types of health care across the different symptom subgroups.

Methods

Survey and linked

SUBMITTER: Wilson LF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9863188 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature