Monitoring morbidity associated with chronic conditions

Note: This website is under development and the presented results are preliminary (in validation).

The study of the impact of chronic diseases on morbidity is essential for health planning and healthcare services management. Given the natural coexistence of multiple chronic diseases in the population, this must be taken into account in the analysis of their impact. This study aims to analyse the impact of chronic diseases on specific morbidity indicators in the Portuguese population, considering their coexistence.

Data from the Portuguese National Health Survey 2014 were used. The coexistence of chronic disease was studied by a principal component analysis, grouping chronic diseases in principal components with a positive correlation and biological plausibility for this grouping. The initial chronic diseases were reclassified by possible classes of sufficient causes for each principal component. These recoded variables were modelled using a multivariate log-Poisson regression. The exponential of the coefficients of the regression were used as a measure of association (prevalence ratio) for calculating the population attributable fractions.

Overall, the principal component with the greatest impact on the studied morbidity indicators was arthrosis, low back/neck disorder, allergy and/or depression. Considering the diseases and their coexistence, it was also arthrosis and low back/neck disorder, isolated or coexisting with other diseases that had the greatest impact on morbidity.

In addition to the importance of studying the impact of chronic diseases on morbidity to evidence based health planning and health services management, the programming of this type of analysis enables its use in monitoring the health of populations.