Table 1.
Diseases corresponding to ICD-9 codes 460–466 and 470–478.
Fig 1.
Histogram of hospital visit rates.
This figure illustrates the distribution of hospital visit rates for respiratory diseases in 349 third-level administrative regions of Taiwan in 2012. As shown, the hospital visit rates vary in different regions.
Table 2.
Average values of PM2.5 concentrations (after Kriging), smoking rates, hospital numbers, and hospital visit rates for respiratory diseases, in 22 second-level administrative regions in Taiwan.
The geographical locations of each region in Taiwan are also reported.
Table 3.
Main descriptive statistics for hospital visit rates, PM2.5 concentrations, smoking rates, and number of hospitals.
Fig 2.
Results of Pearson correlation test for all four variables.
HVRRD refers to the hospital visit rate for respiratory diseases. The symbol X indicates that the two variables’ correlation coefficient is not significant with a p-value greater than 0.05.
Fig 3.
Correlations between hospital visit rates and PM2.5 under different pollution levels.
Table 4.
Estimation results of the CG model for the hospital visit rate for respiratory diseases.
The estimated mean and 95% credible intervals for different variables are reported.
Table 5.
Estimation results of the CG model for acute upper respiratory infections of multiple or unspecified site (ICD-9 code 465) and acute bronchitis and bronchiolitis (ICD-9 code 466).
The estimated mean and 95% credible intervals for different variables are reported.