Hospitalisation of people with obesity in Poland in years 1985-2007.

Aim: The aim of this study was to analyse hospitalisation trends of obese people in Poland in the period of 1985-2007.

Methods: The data comes from a nationwide database created in 1979 in the framework of General Hospital Morbidity Study by the Centre for Monitoring and Analyses of Population Health in The National Institute of Public Health - National Institute of Hygiene in Warsaw. The analysis took into account age, gender, and place of residence (urban/rural) of hospitalised persons. For this analysis hospitalisation rates have been used (number of people hospitalised due to obesity during the year per unit of analysed population).

Results: Analysis has shown a systematic increase in the number of people hospitalised due to obesity. The majority of all admitted patients were women of whom those between the ages of 10-19 were treated most frequently. Because of obesity urban inhabitants were more often hospitalised than those coming from rural areas. In the analysed period of 23 years the hospitalisation span has been reduced by about 50%; it may be due to the trend of shortening treatment time, as well as to high costs of treating obese patients.

Conclusions: Systematic increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the Polish population reflects a problem growing for decades, manifested in the increase in the number of people hospitalised due to obesity.