Association between sepsis incidence and regional socioeconomic deprivation and health care capacity in Germany - an ecological study

Background: Sepsis is a substantial health care burden. Data on regional variation in sepsis incidence in Germany and any possible associations with regional socioeconomic deprivation and health care capacity is lacking.; Methods: Ecological study based on the nationwide hospital Diagnosis-related Groups (DRG) statistics data of 2016. We identified sepsis by ICD-10-codes and calculated crude and age-standardized incidence proportions in the 401 administrative German districts. Associations between socioeconomic and health care capacity indicators and crude and age-adjusted sepsis incidence were investigated by simple and multiple negative binomial (NB) regressions.; Results: In 2016, sepsis incidence was 178 per 100,000 inhabitants and varied 10-fold between districts. We found that the rate of students leaving school without certificate was significantly associated with crude and age-standardized explicit sepsis incidence in the simple and multiple NB regressions. While we observed no evidence for an association to the capacity of hospital beds and general practitioners, the distance to the nearest pharmacy was associated with crude- and age-standardized sepsis incidence. In the multiple regression analyses, an increase of the mean distance + 1000 m was associated with an expected increase by 21.6 [95% CI, 10.1, 33.0] (p
Source: Current Awareness Service for Health (CASH) - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news