“Mapping diagnostic trajectories from the first hospital diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder: a Danish nationwide cohort study using sequence analysis” by Anders Jørgensen et al.
Mapping diagnostic trajectories from the first hospital diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder: a Danish nationwide cohort study using sequence analysis.The objective of this study was to establish a comprehensive map of subsequent diagnoses after a first psychiatric hospital diagnosis.
Through the Danish National Patient Registry, we identified patients aged 18 years or older with an inpatient or outpatient psychiatric hospital contact and who had received one of the 20 most common first-time psychiatric diagnoses (defined at the ICD-10 two-cipher level, F00–F99) between Jan 1, 1995, and Dec 31, 2008.For each first-time diagnosis, the 20 most frequent subsequent psychiatric diagnoses (F00–F99), and death, occurring during 10 years of follow-up were identified as outcomes.
To assess diagnostic stability, we used social sequence analyses, assigning a subsequent diagnosis to each state with a length of 6 months following each first-time diagnosis.
Over 10 years of follow-up, 86 804 (46·9%) patients had at least one subsequent diagnosis that differed from their first-time diagnosis
The risk of receiving a subsequent diagnosis with a psychiatric disorder from an ICD-10 group different from that of the first-time diagnosis varied substantially among first-time diagnoses
These data provide detailed information on possible diagnostic outcomes after a first-time presentation in a psychiatric hospitalThis information could help clinicians to plan relevant follow-up and inform patients and families on the degree of diagnostic uncertainty associated with receiving a first psychiatric hospital diagnosis, as well as likely and unlikely trajectories of diagnostic progression