Acute care hospitals in the A.C. of the Basque Country registered 297,100 hospital discharges in 2007, including people who were hospitalised or admitted to day hospital units, which was up by 2% on the previous year, according to Eustat data. 76% of the discharges were from public hospitals and 24% from private ones. In the same way as in the previous year, the average hospital stay was 5.1 days in 2007.

Circulatory system (cardiovascular) diseases were the main cause of hospitalisation in 2007 and accounted for 12.2% of the total number of discharges, followed by digestive system diseases (11.4%) and diseases of the nervous system and sensory organs (10.4%).

Graph 1.- Patients discharged from acute care hospitals by most common major diagnostic groups. 2006-2007

Source: Eustat

Respiratory diseases stood out as they were up by 8.5% compared to 2007. This group, which is the fourth most frequent cause of hospital admissions, had a greater incidence in January, February and December. Diseases during the perinatal period, which accounted for 0.7% of total discharges, also registered a notable increase of 11% compared to the previous year, mainly due to the conditions resulting from premature births and well birth weights.

Mental disorders accounted for the longest average hospital stays, with a mean of 14.1 days, along with perinatal conditions that averaged 13.8 days. These were followed at some distance by infectious diseases (8.6 days) and tumours (7.9 days).

7,786 people of the total admitted to hospital died. The main causes were tumours (26.5%), where “malignant lung and bronchial tumours” accounted for the highest number of deaths, followed by diseases of the circulatory system (22.3%) and the respiratory system (18.1%).

The pathologies that led to the same person being admitted more than once to hospital were “maintenance chemotherapy” and chronic conditions: “chronic bronchitis” and “cardiac insufficiency”.

Over half of hospital admissions (57%) required a surgical operation or procedure. Operations on the musculoskeletal system, particularly "operations on lower limb joints" (particularly the knee and hip) were the most frequent and accounted for 20% of the total operations. They were followed by operations on the digestive system (14%), where ”repairing hernias” were the most common, and operations on the eye (13%), with ones to remove "cataracts" being the most frequent.

Table 1.- Patients discharged by major diagnostic groups, 2006-2007

* Average length of stay

Source: Eustat