Patterns of somatic diagnoses in older people with intellectual disabilities: A Swedish 11-year register-based study of inpatient data

Aim: To investigate patterns of somatic inpatient ICD-10 diagnoses in people with intellectual disabilities (ID) 55 years and older in relation to age over an 11-year period, and to compare these patterns with a general population sample. Method: The study was based on Swedish national registers. The ID group (n=7936) comprised people who were aged 55 or above in 2012. They were age- and sexmatched with people from the general population (n=7936). Data about somatic inpatient diagnoses were collected retrospectively for 2002-2012. Results: In several years, several diagnoses were more common in the ID group, particularly diseases in the nervous system (OR from 2.06 to 31.75), respiratory (OR from 1.78 to 4.08) and genitourinary diseases (OR from 1.59 to 11.50), infections (OR from 1.78 to 4.08) and external causes of morbidity (OR from 1.53 to 4.08). The oldest persons (70+ years) in the ID group had less occurrence of cardiovascular (OR from 0.42 to 0.72), musculoskeletal diseases (OR from 0.32 to 0.53) and tumours (OR from 0.26 to 0.51). Conclusions: Older people with ID are less likely to have some diagnoses but more likely to have others.