European Respiratory Society Annual Congress 2013

Body: Rationale: Representative, population-based data on the epidemiology of bronchiectasis in Europe is limited. Objective: To investigate the current burden and the trends of bronchiectasis-associated hospitalisations and associated conditions in Germany in order to inform focused patient care and to facilitate the allocation of healthcare resources. Methods: The nationwide German diagnosis-related groups hospital statistics for the years 2005‐2010 were used in order to identify hospitalisations for bronchiectasis as a discharge diagnosis according to the International Classification of Diseases, tenth revision, German modification, code J47. Poisson log-linear regression was used to assess the significance of trends. Results: Overall 51,705 records with bronchiectasis as any hospital discharge diagnosis were extracted from 106 million hospitalisations. The average annual age-adjusted hospitalisation rate was 9.2 hospitalisations per 100,000 population. Hospitalisation rates increased during the study period, with the highest rate of 39 hospitalisations per 100,000 population among men aged 75‐84 years and the most significant average annual increase of 4.9% among females. COPD was the most frequent bronchiectasis-associated condition in up to 35.6% of subjects and showed a significantly increasing trend (p<0.001). Tuberculosis and pneumonia were the only associated diagnoses showing significantly downward trends (p<0.001; each). Conclusion: The present study provides evidence for changing trends in the epidemiology of bronchiectasis. Prospective bronchiectasis registries are needed to establish the exact prevalence of bronchiectasis according to the specific underlying condition.