TY - JOUR
AU - Pedersen, Lars
AU - Henderson, Alasdair D.
AU - Tazare, John
AU - Sorensen, Henrik Toft
AU - Vandenbroucke, Jan P.
AU - Mansfield, Kathryn E.
AU - Mahalingasivam, Viyaasan
AU - Zheng, Bang
AU - Carreira, Helena
AU - Bidulka, Patrick
AU - Piehlmaier, Dominik M.
AU - Wong, Angel Y.S.
AU - Warren-Gash, Charlotte
AU - Hayes, Joseph F.
AU - Quint, Jennifer K.
AU - Katikireddi, Srinivasa Vittal
AU - Mackenna, Brian
AU - Mehrkar, Amir
AU - Bacon, Sebastian C.J.
AU - Goldacre, Ben
AU - Tomlinson, Laurie
AU - Langan, Sinéad M.
AU - Mathur, Rohini
AU - LH&W NCS (or CONVALESCENCE) Collaborative
AU - OpenSAFELY Consortium
AU - Costello, Ruth E.
PY - 2024
DA - October
TI - Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on deprivation-level differences in cardiovascular hospitalisations: a comparison of England and Denmark using the OpenSAFELY platform and National Registry Data
JO - BMJ Open
VL - 14
IS - 10
DO - https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2024-088710
AB - Objectives: To examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on deprivation-related inequalities in hospitalisations for cardiovascular disease (CVD) conditions in Denmark and England between March 2018 and December 2021. Design: Time-series studies in England and Denmark. Setting: With the approval of National Health Service England, we used English primary care electronic health records, linked to secondary care and death registry data through the OpenSAFELY platform and nationwide Danish health registry data. Participants: We included adults aged 18 and over without missing age, sex or deprivation information. On 1 March 2020, 16 234 700 people in England and 4 491 336 people in Denmark met the inclusion criteria. Primary outcome measures: Hospital admissions with the primary reason for myocardial infarction (MI), ischaemic or haemorrhagic stroke, heart failure and venous thromboembolism (VTE). Results: We saw deprivation gradients in monthly CVD hospitalisations in both countries, with differences more pronounced in Denmark. Based on pre-pandemic trends, in England, there were an estimated 2608 fewer admissions than expected for heart failure in the most deprived quintile during the pandemic compared with an estimated 979 fewer admissions in the least deprived quintile. For all other outcomes, there was little variation by deprivation quintile. In Denmark, there were an estimated 1013 fewer admissions than expected over the pandemic for MI in the most deprived quintile compared with 619 in the least deprived quintile. Similar trends were seen for stroke and VTE, though absolute numbers were smaller. Heart failure admissions were similar to pre-pandemic levels with little variation by deprivation quintile. Conclusions: Overall, we did not find that the pandemic substantially worsened pre-existing deprivation-related differences in CVD hospitalisations, though there were exceptions in both countries.
PB - BMJ Publishing Group
UR - https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/339532/
KW - Coronavirus (COVID-19)
KW - Hospital care
ER