Healthcare utilisation and mortality in people with osteoarthritis in the UK: findings from a national primary care database

BACKGROUND: The burden of osteoarthritis (OA) in UK primary care has not been investigated thoroughly. AIM: To estimate healthcare use and mortality in people with OA (overall and joint specific). DESIGN AND SETTING: A matched cohort study of adults with an incident diagnosis of OA in primary care were selected for the study using UK national Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) electronic records. METHOD: Healthcare utilisation was measured as the annual average number of primary care consultations and admissions to hospital after the index date for any cause and all-cause mortality data in 221 807 people with OA and an equal number of controls (with no OA diagnosis) who were matched to the case patients by age (standard deviation 2 years), sex, practice, and year of registration. The associations between OA and healthcare utilisation and all-cause mortality were estimated using multinomial logistic regression and Cox regression, respectively, adjusting for covariates. RESULTS: The mean age of the study population was 61 years and 58% were female. In the OA group, the median number of primary care consultations per year after the index date was 10.91 compared with 9.43 in the non-OA control group (P = 0.001) OA was associated with an increased risk of GP consultation and admission to hospital. The adjusted hazard ratio for all-cause mortality was 1.89 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.85 to 1.93) for any OA, 2.09 (95% CI = 2.01 to 2.19) for knee OA, 2.08 (95% CI = 1.95 to 2.21) for hip OA, and 1.80 (95% CI = 1.58 to 2.06) for wrist/hand OA, compared with the respective non-OA control group. CONCLUSION: People with OA had increased rates of GP consultations, admissions to hospital, and all-cause mortality that varied across joint sites.