Reasons for acute referrals to hospital from general practitioners and out-of-hours doctors in Norway: a registry-based observational study

Table 5 Discharge diagnoses for patients referred to acute hospital admission with shortness of breath (R01, R02, R03 and R04)

Discharge ICD-10 diagnoses	All		OOH referrals			Age			Gender (F)
Discharge ICD-10 diagnoses	N	%	%^a	RR^c	95% CI	Median (IQR)	RR^c	95% CI	%^b	RR^c	95% CI
Heart failure (I50)	991	12	57	1,00	0,89-1,12	82 (73–88)	1,60	1,53-1,68	41	0,66	0,59-0,74
Pneumonia (J12–18)	943	11	67	1,48	1,30-1,68	73 (59–83)	1,08	1,05-1,11	50	1,04	0,92-1,17
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (J44)	633	8	62	1,2	1,03-1,40	74 (67–82)	1,25	1,20-1,30	55	1,19	1,03-1,39
Abnormalities of breathing (R06)	529	6	50	0,66	0,56-0,78	62 (38–76)	0,92	0,90-0,95	56	1,39	1,17-1,64
Pulmonary embolism (I26)	371	4	49	0,69	0,56-0,84	66 (52–76)	1,02	0,98-1,06	45	0,87	0,71-1,06
Atrial fibrillation and flutter (I48)	298	4	41	0,52	0,42-0,65	76 (69–84)	1,36	1,26-1,45	43	0,76	0,61-0,96
Asthma (J45)	288	3	68	1,20	0,94-1,54	31 (3–60)	0,75	0,72-0,77	50	1,10	0,88-1,38
Pain in throat and chest (R07)	277	3	55	0,80	0,64-1,02	53 (38–68)	0,9	0,87-0,94	58	1,49	1,18-1,89
Acute bronchiolitis (J21)^d	213	3	75	1,17	0,89-1,54	1 (1–1)			39	0,92	0,72-1,17
Other acute lower respiratory infection (J22)	175	2	57	0,82	0,61-1,11	59 (13–76)	0,86	0,82-0,90	55	1,38	1,02-1,85
Other	3653	44	59			69 (47–81)			48
All	8371	100	59			70 (50–81)			50

Legend: Distribution of discharge diagnoses for patients referred to acute hospital admission by general practitioner (GP) and out-of-hours (OOH) doctor with the ICPC-2 diagnosis: shortness of breath (R01, R02, R03 and R04) in Norway 2017
IQR Interquartile range
^aPercent of referrals with shortness of breath (R01, R02, R03 and R04) and the current ICD-10 discharge diagnosis which are referred by OOH doctor
^bPercent of women in referrals with shortness of breath (R01, R02, R03 and R04) and the current ICD-10 discharge diagnosis
^cRelative risk for the different discharge ICD-10 diagnoses for OOH referrals relative to GP referrals, for a 10-years increase in age, and for female patients relative to male patients compared with all discharge diagnoses after shortness of breath admission
^dRelative risk for a 10-years increase in age is not estimated due to no variation in age

ISSN: 1472-6963