Publications by authors named "Christian L Ellingsen"

Aims: One half of Norwegians die in nursing homes, where death certificates (DCs) are completed by two types of physicians: in-house physicians or physicians on call. The aims of this study were to examine differences in the quality of DCs due to type of physician and to uncover possible implications of errors for the public statistics.

Methods: DCs from the year 2013 from nursing homes in the catchment area of Akershus University Hospital were examined with regard to logical deficiencies, garbage code diagnoses and type of certifying physician.

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Article Synopsis
  • High excess mortality after hip fractures reflects both the injury itself and pre-existing health conditions, with a significant portion of deaths occurring within the first year post-fracture.
  • A study of 146,132 patients in Norway from 1999 to 2016 found that 24.3% died within a year, primarily due to external causes (like falls) and circulatory diseases shortly after the fracture.
  • The analysis showed that the relative risk of dying from various causes, like circulatory and nervous system diseases, was significantly higher in hip fracture patients compared to age- and sex-matched controls.
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Background: Reliable statistics on the underlying cause of death are essential for monitoring the health in a population. When there is insufficient information to identify the true underlying cause of death, the death will be classified using less informative codes, garbage codes. If many deaths are assigned a garbage code, the information value of the cause-of-death statistics is reduced.

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Background: Geographical differences in health outcomes are reported in many countries. Norway has led an active policy aiming for regional balance since the 1970s. Using data from the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) 2019, we examined regional differences in development and current state of health across Norwegian counties.

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Background: While there is a long history of measuring death and disability from injuries, modern research methods must account for the wide spectrum of disability that can occur in an injury, and must provide estimates with sufficient demographic, geographical and temporal detail to be useful for policy makers. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2017 study used methods to provide highly detailed estimates of global injury burden that meet these criteria.

Methods: In this study, we report and discuss the methods used in GBD 2017 for injury morbidity and mortality burden estimation.

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Article Synopsis
  • Injuries significantly impact global health, with the number of injury deaths rising from approximately 4.26 million in 1990 to about 4.48 million in 2017, despite a decline in age-standardized mortality rates.
  • The Global Burden of Disease study measured both fatal and non-fatal injuries through years of life lost (YLLs) and years lived with disability (YLDs), which were combined into disability-adjusted life years (DALYs).
  • While overall injury incidence increased, age-standardized DALYs decreased, indicating a need for ongoing research focused on injury prevention, better data collection, and improving access to medical care in high-burden areas.
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Introduction: Falls in older aged adults are an important public health problem. Insight into differences in fall-related injury rates between countries can serve as important input for identifying and evaluating prevention strategies. The objectives of this study were to compare Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2017 estimates on incidence, mortality and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) due to fall-related injury in older adults across 22 countries in the Western European region and to examine changes over a 28-year period.

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Background: Falls can lead to severe health loss including death. Past research has shown that falls are an important cause of death and disability worldwide. The Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 (GBD 2017) provides a comprehensive assessment of morbidity and mortality from falls.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates how sociodemographic factors relate to injury-related health outcomes worldwide, specifically analyzing disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) from injuries across 195 countries from 1990 to 2017.
  • - Findings show that while most injury causes display a trend of decreasing DALY rates with higher Socio-demographic Index (SDI), certain injuries like road injuries, interpersonal violence, and self-harm deviate from this trend, indicating complex underlying factors.
  • - The research highlights the importance of understanding these injury patterns to improve health strategies and intervention efforts at both national and global levels, especially since not all injuries follow the same developmental trajectory.
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Background: For injury deaths, the underlying cause of death is defined as the circumstances leading to the injury. When this information is missing, the ICD-10 code X59 (Exposure to unspecified factor) is used. Lack of knowledge of factors causing injuries reduces the value of the cause of death statistics.

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Objective: This study aimed to determine the level of misattribution of prostate cancer deaths in Norway based on the county of Vestfold in the years 2009-2014.

Materials And Methods: The study included 328 patients registered as dead from prostate cancer (PCD; part I of death certificate), 126 patients with prostate cancer as other significant condition at death (OCD; part II of death certificate) and 310 patients who died with a diagnosis of prostate cancer not registered on the death certificate (PC-DCneg) in Vestfold County in 2009-2014. The complete cohort with patients' names and dates of birth was provided by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and the Norwegian Cancer Registry.

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Background: The quality of the data in the Cause of Death Registry is crucial to produce reliable statistics on causes of death. The Cancer Registry of Norway uses data from the Norwegian Patient Register to request information from hospitals regarding patients registered with cancer in the patient registry, but not in the cancer registry. We wanted to investigate whether data from the Norwegian Patient Register can also be used to advantage in the Cause of Death Registry.

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Background: The increasing incidence of prosthesis revision surgery in the Western world has led to an increased focus on the capacity for stem removal. We previously reported on a femoral stem implanted in goats with an approximate 15% reduction in retention force by drilling longitudinally orientated grooves on the side of the stem. In this current study, we aimed to histologically evaluate the bony apposition towards this stem and correlate this apposition with the pullout force.

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Objective: Ruptured infrarenal abdominal aortic aneurysms (rAAAs) represent both a life-threatening emergency for the affected patient and a considerable health burden globally. The aim of this study was to investigate the contemporary epidemiology of rAAA in a defined Norwegian population for which both hospital and autopsy data were available.

Methods: This was a retrospective, single-center population-based study of rAAA.

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One hundred years ago, forensic examination of deceased infants was not an uncommon task for doctors in Norway. The key questions were whether the infant had been born alive and whether the manner of death could be explained. The decomposition of the corpses, which had often lain hidden long before they were examined, posed a considerable problem.

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Multiple intestinal atresia (MIA) is a rare cause of bowel obstruction that is sometimes associated with a combined immunodeficiency (CID), leading to increased susceptibility to infections. The factors underlying this rare disease are poorly understood. We characterized the immunological and intestinal features of 6 unrelated MIA-CID patients.

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Objectives. To investigate the detection rate of major fetal heart defects in a low-risk population implementing routine use of color Doppler. Material and Methods.

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Background: At the turn of 2007/2008, four Norwegian men died after ingestion of commercially available supposedly denatured ethanol.

Material And Methods: The four deaths are presented and discussed.

Results: Methanol concentrations, consistent with lethal methanol poisoning, were detected in blood and urine for all four.

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Background: Trauma is the most prevalent cause of death in the young. Insight into cause and time of fatal pediatric and adolescent trauma is important for planning trauma care and preventive measures. Our aim was to analyze cause, severity, mode and seasonal aspects of fatal pediatric trauma.

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