PURPOSE: To investigate the epidemiology of upper urinary tract stone disease in Taiwan utilizing a nationwide population-based database.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study is based on Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD), which contains the data of all medical beneficiary claims from 22.72 million enrollees, accounting for nearly 99% of Taiwan's population. The Longitudinal Health Insurance Database (LHID) 2005, a subset of NHIRD, contains the data of all medical benefit claims from 1997 through 2010 for a subset of one million beneficiaries who were randomly sampled from the 2005 enrollment file. We selected subjects whose claims records included the diagnosis of upper urinary tract urolithiasis for epidemiologic analysis.
RESULTS: The age-adjusted rate of medical care visits for upper urinary tract urolithiasis decreased by 6.5% from 1,367 in 1998 to 1,278 in 2010 per 100,000 subjects. There was a significantly declining trend over the 13-year period in visits from the female and total subjects (r2=0.86; p=0.001 and r2=0.52; p=0.005, respectively). In contrast, a rising trend was noted among the male subjects (r2=0.45; p=0.012). The age-adjusted prevalence in 2010 was 9.01%, 5.79% and 7.38% in male, female and total subjects, respectively. The overall recurrence rates at one year and five years were 6.12% and 34.71%. Male subjects had a higher recurrence rate than female subjects.
CONCLUSIONS: The present study provides important information on the epidemiology of upper urinary tract stone disease in Taiwan, helping to quantify the burden of urolithiasis and to establish the strategies to reduce the risk of urolithiasis.
Written by:
Huang WY, Chen YF, Carter S, Chang HC, Lan CF, Huang KH. Are you the author?
Institute of Health and Welfare Policy, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan; NHI Medical Expenditure Negotiation Committee, Department of Health, Executive Yuan, Taipei, Taiwan.
Reference: J Urol. 2013 Jan 9. pii: S0022-5347(13)00007-4.
doi: 10.1016/j.juro.2012.12.105
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 23313204
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