Comorbidity among patients admitted to the Department of Surgery, Hammerfest Hospital

Abstract

Background: The citizens of Finnmark have higher mortality than Norway at large. Comorbidity can today be measured using methods like the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI). Comorbidity and the burden of smoking, measured in pack years, amongst patients admitted to Finnmark Hospital Trust have never been investigated. Knowledge of these variables can presumably lead to better patient treatment and follow up. Objective: Measuring CCI, BMI and pack years in patients admitted to the Department of Surgery at Hammerfest Hospital in the Finnmark Hospital Trust. I wanted to investigate how these exposure variables impact on length of hospitalisation, measured by hospital stay >4 days. Method: All patients admitted to the Department of Surgery between 18 November and 10 December 2018 were registered. Reading records one year prior to admission, I recorded all CCI-diagnoses and calculated individual comorbidity scores. Age, length of hospital stay, and smoking status was recorded. Pack years and BMI were calculated. Logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the exposure impact on the outcome. Result: Eighty patients were included in the analysis, of which 66.2% were men. Half of the patients were >70 years of age. Twenty-seven (32%) had >4 days of hospital stay. The mean CCI score was 5.20 (range 0- 13, SD 3.6). One unit increase in CCI score increased the risk of the outcome by 19% (OR 1.19, 95% CI 1.04-1.37). This effect disappeared in the multivariate logistic regression. Conclusion: None of the examined variables displayed a significant effect on the length of the hospital admission in this study. The study is the first of its kind in Finnmark. Due to low internal validity the results should be interpreted with caution. Further research is needed to properly account for the burden of comorbidity in Finnmark Hospital Trust.