Measuring the Health of Persian Gulf Veterans Workshop Summary (1998) / Chapter Skim
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3 Workshop Presentations
3 Workshop Presentations
Pages 5-26
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From page 5... ...
For both systems, data obtained at the examination facility are recorded on the Persian Gulf Registry Code Sheet and sent to a central processing source for aggregation. The data collected include basic demographic information (e.g., age, sex, marital status, and race/ethnicity)
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From page 6... ...
Of those veterans eligible for DVA care, about 230,000 have received DVA outpatient care and more than 33,000 veterans have been hospitalized in DVA medical centers. Table ~ displays some of the basic demographic and military service characteristics of 83,197 ';ndinduals who served in the Persian Gulf War and who have participated in either the DVA or the DoD special diagnostic program.
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From page 7... ...
79 aPGW veterans consisted of all military personnel deployed to the Persian Gulf between August 1, 1990, and July 3 1, 1991. bDoD CCEP participants, inception to December 10, 1997.
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From page 8... ...
MEASURING THE HEALTH OF PERSIAN GULF VETERANS Table 3 displays ~e most Dequent complaints of veterans whose data are recorded ~n DVA PGRIUCAP separately, with data presented for those recorded on the onginal and the revised code sheets: (~) the first 52,835 veterans for whom the ong~nal code sheet was used and (2)
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From page 9... ...
Percent (N= 10,075) Percent 3,606 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue 13,299 25.2 35.8 Mental disorders 7,995 lS.1 3,308 32.8 Respiratory system 7,540 14.3 1,839 18.3 Skin and subcutaneous tissue 7,144 13.5 1,881 18.7 Digestive system 6,028 11.4 1,649 16.4 Nervous system 4,398 8.3 1,689 16.8 Circulatory system 3,747 7.1 1,007 10.0 Infectious diseases 3,715 7.0 882 8.8 Injury and poisoning 2,485 4.7 1,100 10.9 Genitounnary system 1,774 3.4 547 5.4 Neoplasm 232 0.4 69 0.7 No medical diagnosis 13,998 26.5 2,114 21.0 aData are as of November 1996, were prepared by the DVA Environmental Epidemiology Service using the original code sheet, and are published in a report by Kang et al.
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From page 10... ...
TABLE 6 Most Frequent Complaints Among Veterans In DoD CCEP Original Code Sheeta Revised Code Sheets Symptom Joint pain Fatigue Headache Memory loss Sleep disturbance Rash Difficulty concentrating Depressed mood Muscle pain Diarrhea Shortness of breath Abdominal pain Hair loss Bleeding gums Weight loss .
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From page 11... ...
POPULATION AND SIEVED SAMPLE RESEARCH Published studies designed to measure the health of PGW veterans include information about self-reported illness and health status, mortality, and postwar hospitalizations. Duling the committeeorganized workshop Measuring the Health of Persian Gulf Veterans, held on May 7, 1998, presenters described major studies Hat had been completed or that are In progress.
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From page 12... ...
The overall response rate was 76 percent. Those participating were Dom units that, dunng the Persian Gulf War, were spread throughout the Persian Gulf War theater.
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From page 13... ...
The conclusions from this study were as follows: (~) PGW veterans report specific medical and psychiatric conditions at higher rates than their military peers who were not deployed to the Persian Gulf; (2)
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From page 14... ...
. These same clusterings of factors were found for both the POW veterans and a comparable group of military personnel that was not deployed to the Persian Gulf, suggesting that these factors were not unique to those who were deployed to the Persian Gulf War.
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From page 15... ...
Mortality In late 1996 He results of a study entitled The Mortality Among U.S. Veterans of the Persian Gulf War were published (Kang and Bulman, 1996~.
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From page 16... ...
The overall mortality rate ratio was found to be higher among the groups that had been deployed to the Persian Gulf; most of that is due to external causes, especially motor vehicle accidents. The motor vehicle accident rate ratio is 30 percent higher among PGW veterans than nondeployed troops.
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From page 17... ...
To control for this selection bias that resulted in the deployment of only the healthiest people to the Persian Gulf, a covar~ate representing prewar hospitalization was created for inclusion in the multivariate analyses. Looking, then, at any cause of hospitalization of PGW veterans versus non-PGW veterans and controlling for all covanates, no increased risk of hospitalization was found for PGW veterans versus nondeployed veterans for any period of time examined.
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From page 18... ...
According to the presenter, these findings are consistent with those in the literature regarding studies of veterans of other wars, particularly those who served in Vietnam. Overall, dunng the 2 years after the Persian Gulf War, there was no excess of unexpected hospitaTizations among Americans who remained on active duty after serving in Mat conflict.
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From page 19... ...
As demonstrated by the presentations, many data systems are available and have been used to examine the health, largely defined In physiological terms, of Persian Gulf War veterans. As discussed earlier, information from these studies is limited, as suggested by the speakers, and important information such as health status and well-being prior to deployment was either not collected or unavailable.
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From page 20... ...
He intends to identify those who fall below Me thresholds defining objective ill health. The second phase of the study will be a case validation phase to look for the prevalence of conditions such as angina, depression, and chronic fatigue syndrome.
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From page 21... ...
The Persian Gulf Registry database contains information on PGW veterans who have participated in the special diagnostic program established by DVA. As of March 1998, this database contained information on 66,918 PGW veterans.
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From page 22... ...
DVA has identified 696,530 conflict veterans, almost 400,000 theater veterans, and about 2.3 million era veterans. Within the past year, the DVA Environmental and Epidemiology Service has been asked to generate and maintain a consolidated DVA and DoD Persian Gulf Registry.
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From page 23... ...
THE H h`ALTEI OF PATIENTS IN THE SPECIALIZED CARE PROGRAM The Specialized Care Center at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center was established in March 1995, to evaluate, treat, and rehabilitate active-duty personnel who are suffering from chronic debilitating symptoms. About 150 veterans of the Persian Gulf War have participated in this intensive 3week program designed to aid patients in resoling issues that result in dysfunction or impairment.
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From page 24... ...
A fifth study group consisting of randomly selected CCEP participants was included in the hope that this would permit the findings of current health status to be generalizable to the entire CCEP population. Initial plans were to compare each diagnostic group to each of two comparison groups: a sample of PGW veterans who have not participated in the CCEP and a sample of nondeployed veterans who were serving in the military during the period of the Persian Gulf War.
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From page 25... ...
Mr. Donnay asked that the committee recommend that "any future DoD or DVA evaluations of the health status of personnel who served in the Gulf War include routine screening for chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia syndrome, and multiple chemical sensitivity according to standardized diagnostic criteria."
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