The Postwar Hospitalization Experience of Gulf War Veterans Participating in U.S. Health Registries

Tyler C. Smith*, Dinice L. Jimenez, Besa Smith, Gregory C. Gray, Tomoko I. Hooper, Gary D. Gackstetter, Jack M. Heller, Nancy A. Dalager, Han K. Kang, Kenneth C. Hyams, Margaret A.K. Ryan

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

In response to concerns that Gulf War veterans were experiencing increased morbidity resulting from wartime exposures in the Gulf War, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense (DoD) initiated clinical registries to provide systematic health evaluations for self-referred Gulf War veterans. The authors used Cox's proportional hazard modeling with data form all DoD hospitals to estimate the probability of hospitalization resulting from any cause, resulting from diagnosis in a major diagnostic category, and resulting from a specific diagnosis of interest. After adjusting for other risk factors, registry participants were 1.43 times more likely to have a postwar hospitalization than registry nonparticipants (95% confidence interval, 1.40-1.46). These findings support the hypothesis that registry participants were more likely to experience postwar morbidity than veterans who chose not to enroll in the health registries.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)386-397
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
Volume46
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2004
Externally publishedYes

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