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Research Highlights
Influenza Vaccination Associated with Lower Hospitalization Rates
Taken from the Veterans Health Administration Highlights dated March 31, 2003
Influenza-associated deaths in the United States have risen significantly in the last two decades. Approximately 90 percent of those deaths occur among the elderly, but the flu vaccination rate in 2001 was only 63 percent for persons 65 and over, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
VA researchers studied the records for more than 286,000 men and women, 65 or older, in three large managed-care organizations during the 1998-99 and 1999-2000 flu seasons. More than half of each group had been immunized. On average, the immunized persons were older, had worse overall health and had previously used health care more often.
Influenza vaccination of the elderly was associated with lower rates of hospitalization for cardiac disease, stroke, pneumonia, and influenza during the flu season, and was associated with fewer deaths from all causes. Of the 1998-99 cohort, 55.5 percent had received influenza vaccination; 59.7 percent of the 1999-2000 cohort had been immunized.
The article, titled, “Association of Influenza Vaccination with Lower Rates of Hospitalization for Cardiac Disease and Stroke Among the Elderly,” will be published in the New England Journal of Medicine April 3, 2003.
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