Prevalence of Chronic Diseases among International Travelers Seeking Pretravel Medical Advice in 2018 at Malaga, Spain

Abstract

Travelers with preexisting diseases or chronic conditions may be more susceptible to travel-related health risks. They may, therefore, require more attention from specialist travel medicine providers. Our objective was to examine a group of international travelers in Malaga, Spain, quantify the proportion of travelers suffering from chronic conditions, and understand the characteristics of this group. A representative sample of travelers requesting pretravel medical advice at one travel clinic were asked about their preexisting chronic conditions and any immunosuppression. Additional demographic variables were used in an analysis of bivariate correlations. We used a binary logistic regression analysis to identify relationships between independent variables (age, gender, type of trip, travel duration, and destination) and the presence or absence of chronic conditions in travelers. Of the sample of 1,196 travelers, 258 (21.6%) reported having preexisting chronic conditions and 72 (6%) had two or more chronic conditions. Twenty-four of the travelers with chronic conditions (9%) were immunocompromised because of the disease or treatment. The two most common chronic conditions were cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory conditions (36.8% and 17.1%, respectively). The chronic condition increased by 6.7% for every year of increased age. Travelers with chronic conditions are older, travel mainly to visit friends and relatives, and take shorter trips. More than half of travelers visiting (55.8%) needed more attention from the travel medicine practitioner because of their preexisting chronic conditions, age, or type of travel. Surveillance data based on the population of people traveling would be helpful to provide better advice to travelers.

Impfen bei Immundefizienz

“…Bei Immundefizienz besteht ein signifikantes Risiko für eine ernste reiseassoziierte Erkrankung bzw. eine opportunistische Infektion bei gleichzeitiger Gefahr eines verminderten und/oder schneller nachlassenden Impfschutzes [12,78,169,209].…”

Profiles of travelers to intermediate-high health risk areas following the reopening of borders in the COVID-19 crisis: A clustering approach

“…Most papers (in Spain) analyzing the profile of IHHRT travelers before 2020 focus on a reduced set of characteristics (travel destination, motive, duration, age or sex) and none of the them use our methodology [ 29 , 44 , 59 , 60 ]. Aware of these differences, we can compare the averages of several key characteristics (using our results from Table S2 ).…”

“…For instance, in mentioned papers: in Refs. [ 59 , 60 ], the studies were performed in the IVC of Malaga, simmilar to ours ( Appendix 1 ); in Ref. [ 29 ], the analysis was carried out with travelers attending at the USAI BniM travel health clinic in Barcelona, not included in the Spanish Ministry of Health network but similar to our IVC.…”