The article presents the results of the analysis of gender characteristics and distribution according the place of residence (city or village) among residents of Lviv region with multiple sclerosis (MS) who underwent treatment in the neurology unit of Lviv Regional Clinical Hospital (LRCH) from 2012 to 2016. The research was carried out by means of a retrospective analysis of 1,512 medical records (form No. 003/o) of patients with MS who were hospitalized for this disease in the neurology unit of LRCH during the studied period. Statistical processing of materials was carried out using the computer program Statistica 10.0. To verify the normality of sampling distribution with the number of observations up to 100, we applied the Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Lilliefors and Shapiro-Wilk tests [1]. Given the limitations of each criterion, the distribution was not considered normal if at least one of these criteria was significant (p < 0.05). To establish the correlation between two samples, a non-parametric Kendal tau (τ) correlation coefficient (τ) and its error (mτ) were calculated. The factors that determine the duration of one case of inpatient treatment were evaluated ­using the multiple regression method. The dependent variable (y) in the multiple regression equations was the duration of one case of inpatient treatment, and the independent variables (x) were the corresponding age (in years) and sex (men — 1, ­female — 2) of hospitalized persons. In 2012–2016, 1,206 residents of Lviv region with MS were treated in the neurology unit of LRCH. The number of hospitalizations among patients with MS ranged from 262 in 2012 to 340 in 2016. The number of women hospitalized for MS was 2.1 times higher than the number of men (814 against 392). Among all 1,206 patients hospitalized for MS in 2012–2016, 52.57 % lived in cities and 47.43 % — in rural areas of Lviv region. For the period of 2012–2016, patients with MS who were treated in the neurology unit of LRCH spent here 14,961 bed-days in total, of which 4,967 (33.20 %) were spent by men, and 9,994 (66.80 %) — by women. Patients with MS stayed at the hospital for 9.89 ± 0.13 days on average. Due to the optimization of the treatment process in the unit, it was possible to reduce the average duration of one case of inpatient treatment for MS, both among patients of both sexes (Kendall tau correlation coefficient τ = –0.80, p < 0.05) and separately among men (τ = –0.80, p < 0.05) and women (τ = –0.80, p < 0.05). Thus, from 2012 to 2016, the ave­rage duration of one case of inpatient treatment for MS significantly reduced in hospitalized patients of both sexes — by 23.39 % (from 11.63 ± 0.38 days to 8.90 ± 0.23 days, p < 0.001).

multiple sclerosis; gender characteristics; distribution by place of residence

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