Health in California : California health survey.

  • California. Department of Public Health.
Date:
[1957]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health in California : California health survey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ‘Rate Per 1,000 DIAGNOSIS+ sie Persons Per Year Miagraine and headache2 Asthma and hayfever2 Common cold, sore throat, cough and nasopharyngitis Chronic sinusitis? Arthritis and rheumatism2 Allergies (excluding asthma and hayfever)2 Back conditions@ Constipation® Hemorrhoids lsee Appendix D, group coding of ISC classification. 2specifically inquired about in Survey. nesses increase steadily with age—reflecting the cumulative effect of accidents, infections, personal habits and other illness-provoking factors through- out life. Chronic or repeated trouble with migraine and other types of headaches is the most frequently re- ported chronic illness with a rate of 249 episodes per 1,000 persons per year. This reaches a peak of 370 per 1,000 persons in the 15-44 years age group, declining slightly after 65 years. Asthma and hay fever (combined) constitute the next most commonly reported cause of chronic illness. Their incidence also rises from childhood and declines after age 65. This same age pattern is followed by chronic sinusitis and other chronic respiratory diseases. Chronic arthritis and rheumatism are responsible for 132 episodes of illness per 1,000 persons per year. However, this overall rate conceals a sharp rise with age beginning with young adults and continuing even after age 65. Other diseases of muscle, bone and joint, and most cardiovascular and genito-urinary diseases have the same pattern —a sharp rise beginning early in adulthood and continuing beyond age 65. Disabling Illness The data presented above refer to all types of illness without regard to the effect of the illness. This total includes a large amount of illness which is not serious enough to cause any interruption in activities. Since the total number of conditions re- In addition to examining incidence, another way of viewing the illness picture in the population is to consider the persons affected by illness. To an increasing extent, the health professions are at- ported is subject to fluctuations depending upon the particular survey methods used, a more stable and possibly a more significant measure of inci- dence of illness is desirable. For this purpose one may use the incidence of disabling illness, i.e., illness which causes at least one or more days of interruption of activity.’ d Table 6 in Appendix E shows the frequency of episodes of the major categories of acute and chronic illness which caused at least one day of disability. The incidence of disabling illness is only about one-third as great as that of total illness, that is, two episodes compared to five or six per person per year. Disabling acute respiratory illness, which ac- counts for about one-third of all episodes of dis- abling illness, declines sharply with age. Children under 15 years of age have 1,290 such illnesses per 1,000 children each year, while persons 65 years and over report only 320 disabling acute respira- tory illnesses each year. Gastrointestinal illnesses which cause disability also show a substantial de- crease with age. Current accidents account for one-tenth of all acute disabling illnesses. Males 15-44 years of age have disabling accidents more frequently than do females of the same age. Contrary to the situation in acute illness, the rate for disabling episodes of chronic illness gen- erally rises with age. This increase is particularly evident for cardiovascular diseases. A striking ex- ception is chronic respiratory illness, where chil- dren have the highest rate. (The common cold; recurrent, is responsible for most of this chronic respiratory difficulty.) The high rate may be partly explained by the fact that it reflects answers to the question “Do you have chronic or repeated trouble witiF 2 (condition)?” The question was asked about all conditions, regardless of diag- nosis. This constitutes a broader definition of chronicity than is usual. *The Post Enumeration Survey (see Chapter VII for de- tails) shows that reinterviewing persons elicited some additional conditions, but did not increase the nuniber causing disability. However, when someone absent at the time of the original interview was later interviewed for himself, there was an increase reported even in dis- abling illnesses. The effect this has on the incidence rates for disabling illnesses is seen by comparing the unadjusted rates of 1.7 episodes for males and 2.1 for females with the corresponding adjusted rates of 2.1 and 2.3 per person per year. tempting to treat the ill person, rather than the specific illness currently causing him difficulty. Therefore, estimates are presented here of the total number of ill persons during a four-week period,