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Miller RN1, Kang HK2, Cowan
DN3, Lund ET4, Straley-Eason KD1
1National Academy of Sciences, 2Department of Veterans
Affairs, 3Exponent Inc., 4Department of Defense
Large numbers of Persian Gulf War veterans (PGWV) have complained
of illnesses which have not been fully explained by extensive diagnostic
workups. This study tests the hypothesis that active duty PGWV, who enrolled
in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Persian Gulf Health Registry
(PGHR) or the Department of Defense (DoD) Comprehensive Clinical Evaluation
Program (CCEP) with poorly defined or undiagnosed illnesses, had patterns
of illness and health care seeking prior to the PGW different from active
duty PGWV controls who did not enroll. This is being done by attempting
to examine more than 1,000 health records from each of the three categories
of PGWV for outpatient visits during the one year period prior to deployment
to the PGW. Health records have been obtained from VA, DoD, and National
Archives and Records Administration sources. Outpatient visits for the
one year period are counted and placed in clinical categories by an experienced
Army General Medical Officer (physician) who is blinded as to enrollment
or control status. Results will be presented from a multivariate analysis
of the data in the form of odds ratios for enrolling on the registries
with poorly defined or undiagnosed illnesses, controlling for a variety
of demographic, deployment, and clinical visit variables. Conclusions
and implications of the results will be discussed during the presentation.
KEYWORDS: Persian Gulf War, Veterans, Pre-deployment
illness, Pre-deployment health care
Work was supported jointly by VA and DoD under contract
V101(93)P-1417 |
