To inform the provision of support to veterans by analysing hospital discharge data, thereby identifying which conditions show an excess risk, require specific management strategies and deserve further investigation.
Tertiary level care, including all public and private New Zealand hospitals.
All New Zealand Vietnam veterans with service between 1964 and 1972.
Standardised hospitalisation ratios (SHRs) were calculated based on the number of first observed hospital admissions for a condition, those expected being based on New Zealand national hospitalisation rates.
The SHR for all causes of hospitalisation was 1.18, 95% CI 1.15 to 1.21, with modest increases for the major common causes, cardio and cerebrovascular disease. Admission rates for chronic renal failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were highest in the 2006-2009 time period. The highest statistically significant hospitalisation risk was for alcohol-related mental disorder, SHR 1.91, 99% CI 1.39 to 2.43.
Chronic renal failure has limited attribution to veteran service but along with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has the potential to have high costs both to the individual and the health system. We suggest that routine surveillance of veterans by way of a 'flag' in national and primary care databases would facilitate the recognition of service-related conditions and the appropriate provision of healthcare.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 34. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 10 March 2017.
All research outputs
#1,160,731
of 25,374,917 outputs
Outputs from BMJ Open
#2,077
of 25,589 outputs
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#19,399
of 395,149 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMJ Open
#57
of 432 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,374,917 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 25,589 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 18.2. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 432 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its contemporaries.
