Transition Rates between States of the Natural Development of Some Chronic Diseases on the Example of the U.S.

Abstract

This paper presents a method for calculating the transition rates in the scheme of natural development of a chronic disease. The computations are based on the hospital discharges, the deaths and the prevalence rates in the U.S. in 1990. Scheme of chronically ill patient flows, no hospitalization in remission, constant increase in the prevalence rates and time-limited hospitalization – these are assumptions of the method. Incidence rate, relapse rate and remission rate are calculated in the case of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and malignant neoplasms