To determine the use of services and costs in patients with Fibromyalgia (FM) or Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) followed up in Primary Care (PC).
A retrospective multicenter population-based study.
Five primary care clinics managed by Badalona Health Service.
Patients over 18 years seen in the 5 PC centers during the year 2006. Patients with and without GAD/FM were compared.
Main outcomes measures were general, case/co-morbidity, health care use and primary care cost (visits, diagnostic/therapeutic tests and drugs).
logistic regression and ANCOVA (P<.05).
There was a total of 63,349 patients, 1.4% (95% CI, 0.6%-2.2%) had a diagnosis of FM, and 5.3% (95% CI, 4.5%-6.1%) GAD. The average episodes/year and visits /year was higher in FM group compared to GAD group, with a marked difference observed vs. the reference group (8.3 vs. 7.2 and 4.6 episodes/year; and 12.9 vs. 12.1 and 7.4 visits/year; P <.001). FM was shown to be related to female gender (odds ratio [OR] = 16.8), dyslipidemia (OR = 1.5), and depressive syndrome (OR = 3.9) (P <.001 in all cases). GAD was related to age (OR = 1.1), female gender (OR = 2.2), high blood pressure (OR = 1.3), dyslipidemia (OR=1.2), smoking (OR = 1.4), depressive syndrome (OR = 1.2), and cardiovascular events (OR = 1.3) (P<.02 in all cases). After adjusting for age, gender and co-morbidities, mean annual direct ambulatory cost was 555.58 Euro for the reference group, 817.37 Euro for GAD, and 908.67 Euro for FM (P<.001).
Compared with reference group, a considerable use of health resources and costs was observed in patients with FM or TAG in medical practice in PC settings.