Gonçalves-Pinho, Manuel and Bragança, Miguel and Freitas, Alberto (2019) Psychotic disorders hospitalizations associated with cannabis abuse or dependence: a nationwide big data analysis. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, e1813. https://doi.org/10.1002/mpr.1813.
External website: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/m...
OBJECTIVES: We aimed to describe and correlate the hospital panorama of psychotic disorders (PD) with cannabis use (CU) trends in all Portuguese public hospitals.
METHODS: We conducted a retrospective observational study that analysed all hospitalizations that occurred in Portuguese public hospitals from 2000 to 2015. Hospitalizations with a primary diagnosis of PD or schizophrenia were selected based on Clinical Classification Software diagnostic single-level 659. Episodes associated with CU were identified by the International Classification of Diseases Version 9, Clinical Modification code 304.3/305.2 that correspond to cannabis dependence/cannabis abuse.
RESULTS: The number of hospitalizations with a primary diagnosis of PD and schizophrenia associated with CU rose 29.4 times during the study period, from 20 to 588 hospitalizations yearly (2000 and 2015, respectively) with a total of 3,233 hospitalizations and an average episode cost of €3,500. Male patients represented 89.8% of all episodes, and the mean/median age at discharge were 30.66/29.00 years, respectively. From all hospitalizations with a primary diagnosis of PD or schizophrenia, the ones with a secondary diagnosis of CU rose from 0.87% in 2000 to 10.60% in 2015.
CONCLUSIONS: The increase on secondary diagnosis coding and the change on cannabis patterns of consumption in Portuguese population with an increasing frequency of moderate/high dosage cannabis consumers may explain the rise on PD hospitalizations.
B Substances > Cannabis / Marijuana
G Health and disease > State of health > Mental health
G Health and disease > Substance related disorder > Substance related mental health disorder
J Health care, prevention, harm reduction and treatment > Health care programme, service or facility > Hospital
VA Geographic area > Europe > Portugal
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