Gastroenterology in Italian clinical practice. The RING Study: six years' data from gastroenterology departments.

Aim: Computer systems in hospitals provide information on the work of each single operative unit and the complexity of its caselist. However, in Italy, there is no official data-base for Gastroenterology Departments, to summarize their work.

Methods: The RING (Ricerca-INformatizzata-in-Gastroenterologia) study has collected, through a software made on purpose, 113 237 hospital discharge files (HDF) from 55 Italian hospital Gastroenterology Units, since 2001. This caselist provides a picture of the patients and is useful for clinical/management evaluation.

Results: Between January 2001 and December 2006, 55 Gastroenterology Units gathered 88240 HDF referring to ''ordinary admissions''. The male:female rate was 1:1, mean age was 61.3+/-18.5 years. Mean hospital stay was around eight days. Over the years there was a significant drop in DRG183 (miscellaneous digestive disorders-without complications) from 11.5% to 7.4% (P<0.0001), with no similar increase in DRG182 (with complications) which rose from 3.1% to 4.0%. Principal discharge diagnoses are post-hepatic and alcohol-related cirrhosis, hepatocarcinoma, acute pancreatitis, duodenal/gastric ulcer.

Conclusions: The RING data show that the gastroenterologist has been working increasingly with patients whose pathologies would have been ''inappropriately'' treated surgically (DRGs 204 and 174). Inappropriate gastroenterological treatment seems to have decreased as well as the DRG183 with no apparent ''opportunistic'' compensatory increase in DRGs with complications, such as 182.