Hospital admissions for asthma in Finland during 1972-86 of adults aged 65 years and over.

The aim of this investigation was to examine the use of hospital services, on account of asthma, among adults aged 65 and over in 1972-86. According to the discharge records maintained by the National Board of Health, asthma caused a total of 710,187 hospitalization days and 62,342 periods of hospital treatment among elderly people during the 15 years concerned. The annual number of hospitalization days per 100,000 persons, standardized for age and sex, was 8438 and that of treatment periods 731. The figures were higher in the case of patients under 75 years than with older age groups, but it was in the oldest age groups that the numbers of treatment periods increased most. The mean duration of a treatment period decreased from 15.4 days to 9.6 days in the course of the 15 years, but became longer with increasing age. The 15 years of consistently recorded data on asthma patients point to an increase in the use of hospital services by elderly people and suggest that the diagnosis and treatment of asthma in this sector of the population will pose a challenge for the health service in the future.