Variation by age and sex
The rate of hospitalisations with comorbidity of CKD, CVD and/or diabetes increases with age.
In 2020–21, for example, people aged 45–64 were 7.0 times as likely to have a combination of diabetes and CVD recorded on their hospital record as people aged 18–44 (690 and 99 per 100,000 population, respectively). For those aged 65 and over, this difference increased to 30 times the rate of those aged 18–44 (3,000 and 99 per 100,000 population, respectively).
Men were more likely to be hospitalised with comorbidity than women. After adjusting for age, the rate of hospitalisation where all 3 conditions were recorded was 1.7 times as high for men as for women.
Hospital comorbidity in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population
In 2020–21, there were 96,600 non-dialysis hospitalisations of Indigenous people aged 18 and over where CKD, CVD or diabetes was present as a principal and/or additional diagnoses.
Of these hospitalisations, 34,800 (36%) recorded 2 or 3 of the conditions – 8,400 (8.7%) recorded diabetes and CVD together, 1,800 (1.8%) recorded CVD and CKD, 15,700 (16.2%) recorded CKD and diabetes, and 8,900 (9.2%) recorded all 3 conditions (Figure 3).
A higher proportion of Indigenous adults had CKD, CVD and diabetes hospital comorbidity, compared with non-Indigenous adults (36% and 21%, respectively). The proportion of Indigenous hospitalisations with all 3 conditions (9.2%) was also higher than that in the non-Indigenous population (4.9%).
After adjusting for age differences in the populations, the rate of hospitalisation of Indigenous people recording all 3 conditions was 5.8 times as high as the rate of non-Indigenous people.