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Characteristics and economic burden of patients with somatoform disorders in Chinese general hospitals: a multicenter cross-sectional study
BACKGROUND: In China, patients with somatoform disorders (SFD) often seek medical treatment repeatedly in outpatient clinics of general hospitals, which increases unreasonable medical expenses. It is imperative to provide early screening to these patients and specialized treatment to reduce the unne...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10423408/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37573334 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12991-023-00457-y |
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author | Yang, Xiangyun Luo, Jia Wang, Pengchong He, Yue Wang, Cong Yang, Lijuan Sun, Jing Li, Zhanjiang |
author_facet | Yang, Xiangyun Luo, Jia Wang, Pengchong He, Yue Wang, Cong Yang, Lijuan Sun, Jing Li, Zhanjiang |
author_sort | Yang, Xiangyun |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: In China, patients with somatoform disorders (SFD) often seek medical treatment repeatedly in outpatient clinics of general hospitals, which increases unreasonable medical expenses. It is imperative to provide early screening to these patients and specialized treatment to reduce the unnecessary cost. This study aimed to screen patients with SFD in general hospitals using a new Chinese questionnaire and explore the characteristics and economic burden of these patients. METHODS: Patients (n = 1497) from the outpatient department of neurology, cardiology and gastroenterology of three large general hospitals were included. Participants were screened using a newly developed questionnaire, the Self-screening Questionnaire for Somatic Symptoms (SQSS), to identify the patients with SFD (total SQSS score ≥ 29 points). We compared the demographics and clinical information of patients with and without SFD. Logistic regression was used to explore potential factors related to medical expenses, visits to doctors and sick leave days taken. RESULTS: The frequency of detection of patients with SFD was 17.03%. There were significant differences in employment, doctor visits, symptom duration, medical expenses, sick leave days, PHQ-15 scores, and PHQ-9 scores between patients with SFD and without SFD. General nonspecific somatic symptoms were frequently present in patients with SFD. Several potential factors were associated with higher medical expenses, repeated doctor visits, and sick leave days taken in the regression analysis. CONCLUSION: The findings indicate that patients with SFD are common in general hospitals, and their direct and indirect economic burden is higher than that of non-SFD patients, which indicates that more screening effort should be made to this group to early identify their problems. Certain characteristics were identified among patients with SFD and several factors were associated with negative consequences of SFD, all of which might be prevented by developing a preventive intervention program to reduce the economic burden of the patients. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12991-023-00457-y. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10423408 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-104234082023-08-14 Characteristics and economic burden of patients with somatoform disorders in Chinese general hospitals: a multicenter cross-sectional study Yang, Xiangyun Luo, Jia Wang, Pengchong He, Yue Wang, Cong Yang, Lijuan Sun, Jing Li, Zhanjiang Ann Gen Psychiatry Research BACKGROUND: In China, patients with somatoform disorders (SFD) often seek medical treatment repeatedly in outpatient clinics of general hospitals, which increases unreasonable medical expenses. It is imperative to provide early screening to these patients and specialized treatment to reduce the unnecessary cost. This study aimed to screen patients with SFD in general hospitals using a new Chinese questionnaire and explore the characteristics and economic burden of these patients. METHODS: Patients (n = 1497) from the outpatient department of neurology, cardiology and gastroenterology of three large general hospitals were included. Participants were screened using a newly developed questionnaire, the Self-screening Questionnaire for Somatic Symptoms (SQSS), to identify the patients with SFD (total SQSS score ≥ 29 points). We compared the demographics and clinical information of patients with and without SFD. Logistic regression was used to explore potential factors related to medical expenses, visits to doctors and sick leave days taken. RESULTS: The frequency of detection of patients with SFD was 17.03%. There were significant differences in employment, doctor visits, symptom duration, medical expenses, sick leave days, PHQ-15 scores, and PHQ-9 scores between patients with SFD and without SFD. General nonspecific somatic symptoms were frequently present in patients with SFD. Several potential factors were associated with higher medical expenses, repeated doctor visits, and sick leave days taken in the regression analysis. CONCLUSION: The findings indicate that patients with SFD are common in general hospitals, and their direct and indirect economic burden is higher than that of non-SFD patients, which indicates that more screening effort should be made to this group to early identify their problems. Certain characteristics were identified among patients with SFD and several factors were associated with negative consequences of SFD, all of which might be prevented by developing a preventive intervention program to reduce the economic burden of the patients. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12991-023-00457-y. BioMed Central 2023-08-12 /pmc/articles/PMC10423408/ /pubmed/37573334 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12991-023-00457-y Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Yang, Xiangyun Luo, Jia Wang, Pengchong He, Yue Wang, Cong Yang, Lijuan Sun, Jing Li, Zhanjiang Characteristics and economic burden of patients with somatoform disorders in Chinese general hospitals: a multicenter cross-sectional study |
title | Characteristics and economic burden of patients with somatoform disorders in Chinese general hospitals: a multicenter cross-sectional study |
title_full | Characteristics and economic burden of patients with somatoform disorders in Chinese general hospitals: a multicenter cross-sectional study |
title_fullStr | Characteristics and economic burden of patients with somatoform disorders in Chinese general hospitals: a multicenter cross-sectional study |
title_full_unstemmed | Characteristics and economic burden of patients with somatoform disorders in Chinese general hospitals: a multicenter cross-sectional study |
title_short | Characteristics and economic burden of patients with somatoform disorders in Chinese general hospitals: a multicenter cross-sectional study |
title_sort | characteristics and economic burden of patients with somatoform disorders in chinese general hospitals: a multicenter cross-sectional study |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10423408/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37573334 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12991-023-00457-y |
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