Loading...
People with two or more chronic disorders — multimorbidity — often are not served well by a healthcare system that is focused on single disease entities. Multimorbidity becomes more common with age, but its further epidemiology has not been well defined.
Scottish researchers used national primary care data to identify 40 common chronic physical and mental conditions in 1.7 million patients (including both children and adults). Forty-two percent had at least one morbidity; of those patients, 55% had multimorbidity, and 20% had physical and mental health multimorbidity. The prevalence of multimorbidity rose with age, but, in absolute numbers, more people with multimorbidity were younger than 65.
Adults younger than 65 in the poorest socioeconom…