Health Care Utilisation and Attitudes towards Health Care in Subjects Reporting Environmental Annoyance from Electricity and Chemicals

Table 1

Characteristics of the population in relation to environmental annoyance and treatment of hypertension.

	Electrical and chemical annoyance	Treated hypertension	Ref.
Number of subjects	295	1353	11907
Mean age	43	64	47
Women (%)	66	53	54
Cost > 0 SEK (%)	84	96	77
Having been in need of, but not	49	17	20
having sought, medical care (%)
Medical staff neglected	25	4	7
my wishes/needs (%)
Not treated with respect	6	1	3
from doctor on last visit (%)
Mostly negative experience (%)	19	4	6
Use of alternative medication (%)	49	33	28
General Health Questionnaire	2.26 (2.22-2.31)	2.01 (1.98-2.03)	1.95 (1.94-1.95)
mean(a) score (95% CI)
Self-rated health score,	4.13 (3.98-4.29)	4.83 (4.76-4.91)	5.16 (5.13-5.18)
mean(a) (95% CI) SEK
Mean total cost (95%	6 658 (3 182–10 134)	14 424 (12 807–16 040)	7 890 (7 346–8 435)
Confidence Interval) SEK
Mean(a) total cost	7 888 (4 417–11 358)	11 698 (10 024–13 372)	8 216 (7 664–8 767)
(95% Confidence Interval) SEK
Median total cost SEK	2519	4329	1628
Mean(a) GP cost	1371 (1195–1546)	1594 (1510–1679)	963 (935–991)
(95% Confidence Interval)
Median GP cost SEK	790	1 185	395
Mean(a) (95% CI)	1.9 (1.6-2.1)	2.4 (2.3-2.5)	1.4 (1.4-1.5)
number of visits to GP

(a)Age and gender adjusted.