Epidemiological analysis of all insured persons in a regional health insurance organization for Upper Austria (Oberosterreichische Gebietskrankenkasse) with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and control group (2005-2011)

摘要

The current epidemiologic analysis includes more than 1.6 million Upper Austrian health insurance recipients between 2005 and 2011. Persons who were in hospital with an ICD-10 code "injuries to the head" from S00-S09 during the period under review had an incidence of 579/100,000 per year. Three levels of severity were defined according to the length of hospital stay or inpatient rehabilitation (>42, 8-42, and <8 days). These three groups (G1, G2, G3) comprised a severe group (2%), a moderate group (11 %) and a mild group (87 %). A fourth group was included in the analysis which consisted of hospital patients who had undergone musculoskeletal surgery. These four groups were compared according to age, sex, unemployment, retirement, length of hospital stay, work disability and risk of death.This study shows that TBI happens to men more frequently, increasingly so when injury is severe (up to 2/3). Furthermore, the results show two peak ages: the younger patients with milder injuries and older patients with more severe injuries.An unexpected result was the finding of longer stays in hospital or rehabilitation for group 1 (G1) before the TBI event, so you have to suppose a predisposition for severe TBI. Given that these patients suffer greatly, and their treatment requires many resources, this question is being researched in a present master thesis. In group 3 (G3), which is dominated by younger patients, and which contains most of the TBI patients, health insurance status was disrupted twice as often as in group 2 (G2) with moderate injuries and the same level of unemployment. Further studies on this topic are thus needed, as the absolute number of affected people in group 3 (G3) is very high.