Biomedical subjects

G Ringbäck Weitoft

Publications and source records attributed to G Ringbäck Weitoft.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

Alcohol-related hospital utilization and mortality in different occupations in Sweden in 1991-1995.

OBJECTIVES: This study investigated alcohol-related hospital utilization and alcohol-related mortality according to occupation among men and women. Whether increased rates of alcoholism in some occupations result from circumstances within the occupation or from selective recruitment of persons prone to alcohol misuse was studied. METHODS: All Swedish residents were included who reported an occupation in the censuses of 1985 and 1990 and were born in 1926-1960. The relationships between occupation and hospitalization due to an alcoholism diagnosis in 1991-1994 and alcohol-related mortality in 1991-1995 were studied among stable workers (those who held the same occupation in both censuses) and newly recruited workers (those who held different occupations in the two censuses). Incidence and mortality rates were calculated for the different occupations using the person-year method, and standardized rate ratios were used as approximations of the relative risk of disease occurrence and mortality in different occupations as compared with the corresponding statistics of the entire study population. RESULTS: Several, mostly manual, occupations showed an increased relative risk of alcoholism diagnoses and alcohol-related mortality. Nonmanual occupations had low risks. Women in male-dominated high-risk occupations often showed increased relative risks. Stable and newly recruited employees in the same occupation showed very similar relative risks. CONCLUSIONS: New recruits into high-risk occupations often have increased relative risks of at least the same magnitude as persons employed long-term in the same occupations. This finding indicates that the increased relative risk of alcoholism found in some occupations can partly be explained by selective recruitment of heavy drinkers.

Alcoholism↗

PubMed2000

Mortality among lone mothers in Sweden: a population study.

BACKGROUND: An increasing number of lone mothers are experiencing financial and health disadvantages. Our aim was to assess mortality among lone mothers compared with mothers with partners. METHODS: In this population-based study, overall and cause-specific mortality, between 1991 and 1995, was estimated for 90,111 lone mothers and 622,368 mothers with partners from data collected in the Swedish Population and Housing Census 1990. We estimated relative risks by Poisson regression, adjusted for socioeconomic status, and, to handle health-selection effects, we adjusted for previous inpatient history from 1987 to 1990. FINDINGS: Lone mothers showed an almost 70% higher premature risk of death than mothers with partners. The excess risk remained significantly increased (relative risk 1.2 [95% CI 1.1-1.4]) after adjustments for socioeconomic status and previous severe somatic and psychiatric inpatient history. Increased mortality was especially pronounced for suicides (2.2 [1.5-3.1]), violence (3.0 [0.9-10.6]), and alcohol-related mortality (2.4 [1.4-4.1]) among mothers who were without a partner in 1985 and in 1990. INTERPRETATION: The increase of lone mothers in society shows financial, social, and health disadvantages. Nevertheless, the increased mortality risk of lone mothers seems to be partly independent of socioeconomic status and health selection into lone motherhood. For long-term lone mothers the risks may be underestimated when adjusting for selection bias by taking hospital discharge history into account, since these events may be part of the consequences of the stress of lone motherhood.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1998

Avoidable mortality among psychiatric patients.

Avoidable mortality is a selection of causes of death considered to be amenable to health care and thereby used as an indicator of the quality of health care. In this study avoidable mortality for more than 30,000 psychiatric patients discharged from any hospital of Stockholm County between 1981 and 1985 has been followed up in the Cause of Death Register for the period 1986-1990. Standardised rate ratios were calculated for different groups of psychiatric disorders compared to the general population of Stockholm County for indicators of avoidable mortality, suicide, other mortality ("unavoidable") and causes possibly related to treatment with psychotrophic drugs. As expected, the psychiatric patients had the most pronounced elevated risk for suicide. i.e. 6- to 24-fold compared to the general population, and noticeably more elevated for women. It is also noteworthy that the relative mortality risks for diagnoses amenable to medical interventions and potential side-effects of psychotrophic drugs are higher than for other causes of death ("unavoidable"). The relative risks for avoidable mortality were 4.7 for men and 3.8 for women and for diagnoses possibly related to side-effects of psychotrophic drugs, 7.2. The relative risks for "unavoidable" mortality were 3.4 for men and 3.2 for women. The excess avoidable mortality rates for psychiatric patients and the elevated suicide risk, especially for female patients, are warning signals of shortcomings in psychiatric care that warrants further investigation.

Adult↗