[Hepatitis B and C: incidence and regional distribution of hospitalizations in Austria].
The aim of this study was to describe the incidence as well as the geographical 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 administrative recordings of every in-patient treated in an Austrian hospital. Hepatitis B: The mean value of SHR (standardized hospitalization rate) amounted to 3.2/100.000 for the entire area of Austria. Among all Austrian provinces, Vorarlberg yielded the highest regional value (6.4/100.000), Burgenland 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 eastern districts of Lower Austria. Hepatitis C: The mean value of SHR amounted to 8.4/100.000 for the entire area of Austria. Regional SHR values in Austrian provinces ranged widely from 2.9/100.000 (Burgenland) to 15.1/100.000 (Salzburg), some provinces (Salzburg, Carinthia) showed a marked increase of hospitalizations within the observation period. The highest regional values of SHR were found in and around the districts of Salzburg, Villach, and Klagenfurt.


CONCLUSIONS
The differences observed in SHR values of Austrian districts cannot 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 hospitals 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 distribution of hepatitis C patients was found between the two data sets. This is considered an argument in favour of the validity of MBDS-Data.
Weichbold
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Ludwig Boltzmann-Institut für Epidemiologie und Gesundheitssystemforschung, Innsbruck.
Bertel
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A
Pelzer
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A
Pfeiffer
K P
KP
Ferenci
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P
D001317:Austria / Q000453:epidemiology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003625:Data Collection / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006509:Hepatitis B / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006526:Hepatitis C / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006760:Hospitalization / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D019371:Topography, Medical