Venous leg ulcer: incidence and prevalence in the elderly.
BACKGROUND
Venous leg ulcer is a disease most common in those aged 65 years and older. However, the incidence and prevalence have not been well established.


OBJECTIVE
Our purpose was to estimate the prevalence and incidence of venous leg ulcers in the elderly.


METHODS
We studied the General Practice Research Database, validated our case ascertainment strategy, and estimated the annual prevalence and incidence of venous leg ulcer.


RESULTS
The positive predictive value of our ascertainment strategy was 98.3% (95% confidence interval [CI], 90.0, 100.0). The annual prevalence of venous leg ulcer among the elderly was 1.69 (95% CI, 1.65, 1.74). The overall incidence rate was 0.76 (95% CI, 0.71, 0.83) for men and 1.42 (1.35, 1.48) per 100 person-years for women.


CONCLUSIONS
Venous leg ulcer is a significant problem in those aged 65 years and older. As compared with previous studies, because we used medical records from a population of known size, our results are precise and less biased.
Margolis
David J
DJ
Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. dmargoli@cceb.med.upenn.edu
Bilker
Warren
W
Santanna
Jill
J
Baumgarten
Mona
M
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008297:Male; D015995:Prevalence; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D006113:United Kingdom / Q000453:epidemiology; D014647:Varicose Ulcer / Q000453:epidemiology*