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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Health of older people
— disease prevalence, prescription and referral rates, England and Wales 1996 | | Author(s) | Mark Carter, Kath Moser, Sue Kelly |
| Journal title | Health Statistics Quarterly, 04, Winter 1999 |
| Pages | pp 9-15 |
| Keywords | Ill health ; Hypertension ; Heart disease ; Anxiety ; Depression ; Diabetes ; Drugs ; Referrals ; Statistics [data]. |
| Annotation | Older people - defined here as those aged 65 and over - comprise a group whose health and medical requirements differ from those of younger age groups, and deserve specific research and analysis. This article analyses published data from the General Practice Research Database (GPRD), to enable us to build up a picture of older people's health and their health service usage, in terms of prescribed medication and referrals to out-patient specialists. The prevalence of five treated diseases is examined: hypertension, coronary heart disease, depression, anxiety, and insulin and non-insulin treated diabetes. Data are taken from 288 general practices across England and Wales. On average, older women were prescribed 27 items during 1996, as compared to 23 items for men. For both sexes, there were more than 200 referrals per 1,000 patient years at risk during 1996. It is paramount that further validation and continued quality checking of GPRD data is undertaken, to ensure the future of the database as an important primary health research tool. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-991109233 A |
| Classmark | CH: CQQ: CQH: ENP: ENR: CPD: LLD: L5R: 6C |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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