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

Table 7 Discharge diagnoses for patients referred to acute hospital admission with the diagnosis appendicitis (D88). Relative risk for different discharge ICD-10 diagnoses by explanatory variables (referrals, age and gender), compared with discharged with acute appendicitis (K35)

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
Acute appendicitis (K35)	1318	51	62			29 (19–44)			43
Abdominal and pelvic pain (R10)	613	24	61	0.95	0.84–1.07	22 (16–32)	0.82	0.79–0.86	68	2.04	1.77–2.35
Diverticular disease (K57)^d	79	3	41	0.68	0.44–1.07	46 (29–56)	1.71	1.58–1.85	48	0.93	0.61–1.40
Other diagnoses chapter K (digestive)	180	7	59	0.94	0.71–1.24	29 (19–49)	1.06	0.98–1.14	48	1.20	0.91–1.57
Diagnoses chapter N (genitourinary)	172	7	70	1.32	0.98–1.79	29 (19–41)	0.94	0.86–1.01	87	7.13	4.65–10.94
Other	219	8	54	0.72	0.57–0.93	24 (13–38)	0.86	0.79–0.93	50	1.32	1.03–1.69
All	2581	100	61			27 (18–82)			53

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 referral code appendicitis (D88) in Norway 2017
IQR Interquartile range
^aPercent of OOH doctor in referrals with appendicitis (D88) diagnosis and the current ICD-10 discharge diagnosis
^bPercent of women in referrals with appendicitis (D88) diagnosis and the current ICD-10 discharge diagnosis
^cRelative risk for the different ICD-10 discharge 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 discharge with acute appendicitis (K35)
^dPoisson regression was used to estimate RR

ISSN: 1472-6963