Hepatitis B and C: Incidence and geographical distribution of inpatients in Austria

The aim of this study was to describe the incidence as well as the geograph ical distribution of hospitalizations due to hepatitis B or C (according to ICD 9) in Austria between 1996 and 1998. The data were taken from the MBDS (Minimum Basic Data Set) which contains medical, demographical and adminis trative recordings of every in-patient treated in an Austrian hospital. Hepatitis B: The mean value of SHR (standardized hospitalization rate) amou nted to 3.2/100.000 for the entire area of Austria. Among all Austrian prov inces, Vorarlberg yielded the highest regional Value (6.4/100.000), Burgenl and the lowest one (1.9/100.000). Considerably high regional values of SHR were found in most districts of Vorarlberg, as well as in Vienna and the ea stern districts of Lower Austria. Hepatitis C: The mean value of SHR amounted to 8.4/100.000 for the entire a rea of Austria. Regional SHR values in Austrian provinces ranged widely fro m 2.9/100.000 (Burgenland) to 15.1/100.000 (Salzburg), some provinces (Salz burg, Carinthia) showed a marked increase of hospitalizations within the ob servation period. The highest regional values of SHR were found in and arou nd the districts of Salzburg, Villach, and Klagenfurt. Conclusions: The differences observed in SHR values of Austrian districts c annot be accounted for by local differences of Hepatitis prevalence alone. They are supposedly also due to local differences of the health care system , as well as the clinical, diagnostical or documentational practices in hos pitals in different regions. In order to evaluate MBDS-Data quality, a post -hoc comparison with external data stemming from three Austrian multicenter studies was performed. A remarkable correspondence in geographical distrib ution of hepatitis C patients was found between the two data sets. This is considered an argument in favour of the validity of MBDS-Data.