We performed a semistructured literature review to identify relevant articles. Specifically, we queried MEDLINE for peer-reviewed publications that examined the prevalence, outcomes, costs, and patient management challenges associated with multiple chronic conditions.
We first selected all articles the Mesh terms ‘chronic disease’ and ‘comorbidity,’ and limited our search to articles on adults published in English between January 2000 and March 2007 (n=643). This set was further paired down using 2 different strategies. The first strategy used a set of specific Mesh terms related to prevalence, quality, access, delivery of care, patterns of care, morbidity, mortality, and expenditures. To ensure that we did not overlook any important articles in the original set, we also limited the original set to articles published in core journals. The final set of 123 articles was the union of abstracts gained from these 2 approaches. Articles without abstracts or whose author was anonymous were not reviewed. The remaining abstracts were reviewed by the first author and abstracts that did not mention at least 1 specific somatic chronic illness, abstracts that did not examine specific comorbidities, and articles that focused on an acute illness or procedure were removed. Information summarized in this review stem from the remaining articles and prior publications cited by these articles.
We first selected all articles the Mesh terms ‘chronic disease’ and ‘comorbidity,’ and limited our search to articles on adults published in English between January 2000 and March 2007 (n=643). This set was further paired down using 2 different strategies. The first strategy used a set of specific Mesh terms related to prevalence, quality, access, delivery of care, patterns of care, morbidity, mortality, and expenditures. To ensure that we did not overlook any important articles in the original set, we also limited the original set to articles published in core journals. The final set of 123 articles was the union of abstracts gained from these 2 approaches. Articles without abstracts or whose author was anonymous were not reviewed. The remaining abstracts were reviewed by the first author and abstracts that did not mention at least 1 specific somatic chronic illness, abstracts that did not examine specific comorbidities, and articles that focused on an acute illness or procedure were removed. Information summarized in this review stem from the remaining articles and prior publications cited by these articles.
