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Trends in hospital admissions and mortality from asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in Australia
Author(s) -
Walters E Haydn,
WoodBaker Richard,
Wilson David H,
Tucker Graeme,
Adams Robert J,
Villanueva Elmer V
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2008.tb01603.x
Subject(s) - indigenous , medicine , family medicine , gerontology , library science , ecology , biology , computer science
TO THE EDITOR: Our comments and question relate to the interesting article by Wilson et al on asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in Australia. The statistics on mortality trends for these diseases were complex, but the gist of the matter s ems to relate to veraged trends for COPD and asthma over a 10-year period. However, the rigorous statistics missed (or the articl did not c mment on) wh t seemed from the figures to be a single step in opposite directions for COPD and asthma mortality in about 1997 — most marked in a downward direction for asthma from 1997 to 1998 and an upward direction for COPD in females from 1996 to 1997. (Box 3 and Box 4 from the original article by Wilson et al are reproduced here for ease of referral.) To us, the data seem, for the most part, to suggest sets of two horizontal lines linked by a sudden, presumably artefactual, discrete change for both conditions at around the same time. Do the complex statistical trend analyses miss an essential feature? Was there, for example, a change to International classification of diseases coding for airway disease specifically around 1997? E Haydn Walters, Member Richard Wood-Baker, Clinical Member Respiratory Research Group, Menzies Research Institute, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS. haydn.walters@utas.edu.au