Association between cholecystectomy and intestinal cancer: a national record linkage study.

Objective: To investigate the risk of intestinal cancer in a cohort of people who had undergone cholecystectomy for gallstones, and in a cohort of people who had been hospitalized for gallbladder disease but had not undergone cholecystectomy.

Background: Some investigators have suggested that cholecystectomy increases the risk of intestinal cancer. Despite extensive study, the evidence remains inconclusive.

Benign breast disease and subsequent breast cancer: English record linkage studies.

Background: Benign breast disease (BBD) increases the risk of breast cancer, but details of the relationship would benefit from further study in the UK.

Methods: Analysis of linked statistical abstracts of hospital data, including a cohort of 20 976 women with BBD in an Oxford data set and 89 268 such women in an English national data set.

Results: Rate ratios (RRs) for breast cancer, comparing BBD and comparison cohorts in these two data sets, were 2.

Head and other physical trauma requiring hospitalisation is not a significant risk factor in the development of ALS.

The pathogenesis of ALS is not fully understood but, as an overwhelmingly sporadic disorder, it is likely to result from a complex mixture of polygenic and environmental risk factors operating in the context of an ageing nervous system. Physical trauma, in particular head injury, has been variably associated with both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, and largely discounted in relation to multiple sclerosis. Several case-control studies in ALS have reported an association with physical trauma or head injury, but such studies are greatly limited by recall bias.

Self-harm and depression in women with urinary incontinence: a record-linkage study.

Objective: To investigate the association between self-harm and urinary incontinence (UI), and between depression and UI, in women.

Patients And Methods: The incidence of self-harm in women with UI is not well documented. We analysed a statistical database that includes hospital contact data for UI and for self-harm and depression.

Risk of multiple sclerosis after head injury: record linkage study.

Background: The possibility that head injury may influence the development of multiple sclerosis (MS) has been studied inconclusively in the past.

Objective: To determine whether head injury is associated with an increased risk of MS.

Method: Analysis of database of linked hospital and death records, comparing the occurrence of MS in a cohort of people admitted to hospital with head injury and a reference cohort.

Cancer after cholecystectomy: record-linkage cohort study.

We investigated whether cholecystectomy is associated with subsequent cancer and, if so, whether the association is likely to be causal, by undertaking a retrospective cohort study using linked medical statistics, comprising a cholecystectomy group (n=39 254) and a reference cohort admitted for a range of other medical and surgical conditions (n=334 813). We found a short-term significant elevation of rates of cancers of the colon, pancreas, liver, and stomach after cholecystectomy, but no long-term elevation. Excluding colon cancers within 2 years of admission to hospital, the rate ratio for colon cancer after cholecystectomy, compared with the reference cohort, was 1.