BTEX compounds are mineralised sequentially within specific redox environments, with changes in electron acceptor utilisation being defined by the exhaustion of specific BTEX components.
Utilisation was defined as the number of pharmaceuticals taken within the last 7 days.
Hospital utilisation is defined as the sum of emergency room visits and hospitalisations (an emergency room visit that leads to a hospitalisation is counted only as a hospitalisation).
Figure 1 provides details of the utilisation of defined rehabilitation services at 28 days, 6 months, 12 months and at any time during follow-up.
GP-related service utilisation was defined as accessing a GP in the past month at either general or PWID-specific health centres (Table 1).
Medical resource utilisation was defined as medical costs incurred in the ED including nurse and physician fees, cost of medications and diagnostics, and medical materials.
Health care utilisation was defined as the sum of the number of services or time (days) of stay over the three-year follow-up period; or a valuation based on the prices in Table 1.
However, in our study high utilisation was defined when patients were coming more than eleven times per year into practice, which is more than twice as much compared with an US study [ 6].
Costs and resource utilisation were defined as 'gout-related' if the claim had a diagnosis for gout in any position, or (in the calculation of costs) if a pharmacy claim was for allopurinol, febuxostat, probenecid, pegloticase, colchicine, probenecid/colchicine, sulfinpyrazone, corticosteroids or NSAIDS.
