Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
ICES, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Autism Res. 2021 Feb;14(2):400-410. doi: 10.1002/aur.2419. Epub 2020 Oct 24.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder requiring significant health and educational resources for affected individuals. A reference standard for ASD was generated from an existing population-based cohort of 10,000 children and youth aged 1-24 years who were randomly selected for chart abstraction from 29,256 patients from 119 family physicians. We developed and validated an algorithm to identify children and youth with ASD within an electronic medical record system (N = 80,237, aged 1-24 years) in order to examine the prevalence of comorbidities and quantify health system utilization within the cohort. We identified 1,062 children and youth with ASD representing a prevalence of 1.32%. Compared to individuals without ASD, those with ASD had a higher prevalence of asthma, were more likely to visit a specialist, undergo surgery, and be hospitalized for psychiatric reasons. Children and youth with ASD in Ontario have complex health system needs, illustrated through a significant burden of comorbidities and increased health system utilization. LAY SUMMARY: Our paper generates population-based estimates of health system use by children and youth with ASD, who have a higher burden of comorbidities than the general population. We developed a case-finding algorithm and applied it in electronic medical records to create a cohort of children and youth with ASD, thereby generating an important resource to further study the health care needs of individuals with ASD.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）是一种神经发育障碍，需要为受影响的个体提供大量的健康和教育资源。ASD 的参考标准是从一个现有的基于人群的队列中生成的，该队列包括 10000 名 1-24 岁的儿童和青少年，他们是从 119 位家庭医生的 29256 名患者中随机选择进行图表摘要的。我们开发并验证了一种算法，以便在电子病历系统中识别患有 ASD 的儿童和青少年（N=80237，年龄 1-24 岁），以检查队列中合并症的患病率和量化卫生系统的使用情况。我们确定了 1062 名患有 ASD 的儿童和青少年，患病率为 1.32%。与没有 ASD 的个体相比，患有 ASD 的个体患有哮喘的比例更高，更有可能看专科医生，接受手术，并因精神原因住院。安大略省的 ASD 儿童和青少年有复杂的卫生系统需求，通过合并症的大量负担和卫生系统使用的增加来体现。通俗地说：我们的论文生成了 ASD 儿童和青少年卫生系统使用的基于人群的估计，他们比一般人群有更高的合并症负担。我们开发了一种病例发现算法，并将其应用于电子病历中，创建了一个 ASD 儿童和青少年队列，从而为进一步研究 ASD 个体的医疗保健需求提供了一个重要资源。
