Disease Burden Assessment Beyond In-patient Data: A Morbidity Profile Assessment of Outpatients

Background: global disease burden estimates often lack realdata on morbidities, especially from patients treated in outpatientdepartment (opd). in sri lanka, around 40 million visits are madeannually to the opds in government hospitals and we conducteda preliminary study to assess the morbidity profile of these opdpatients.methods: patients attending the opd, in teaching hospitalperadeniya, sri lanka, was recruited into the study using systematicrandom sampling procedure. a self-administered, structuredquestionnaire was used to collect data. investigators explainedthe study to patients and data collection was completed beforeseeing the physician. self-reported presenting complain was usedto analyze the morbidity profile of the patients.results: the study sample consisted of 1 439 patients (male - 515,female - 924). the mean age of the study sample was 40 years(sd = 19 years). the mean age of the females were statisticallysignificantly higher than that of the males (t = 4.03, p < 0.001).housewives constituted the major occupational group (52%)followed by students (15.9%). the most common presentingcomplains reported were body aches and pains (15.6%), coughand cold (10.5%), and abdominal pain (8.5%). leading cause ofhospital visit among different demographic categories showedstatistically significant variations.conclusions: the morbidity pattern observed in this patientpopulation was not previously reported. opd surveillance shouldbe established to understand the changing pattern of minorailments which might have a huge impact on health of the public.