Hospital admissions in England are recorded using the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) system. From April 1987 to March 1995 diagnoses in HES were classified using the International Classification of Diseases, 9th revision (ICD 9). From the financial year beginning April 1995 onwards these were classified using ICD 10. For many conditions the definition has changed little from ICD 9 to ICD 10. For others, for example fibrosing alveolitis, the ICD10 description is less specific.
There were 162,000 emergency hospital admissions for chronic obstructive respiratory diseases in England during the financial year 1999/2000. These included 75,600 COPD admissions (excluding asthma) in the 65 year olds and over and 28,500 admissions for asthma in children. The lower respiratory infections, pneumonia and acute bronchitis, accounted for 97,000 admissions. Of these 47,200 were for pneumonia in the 65s and over and 21,800 were for acute bronchitis in children. The numbers of emergency admissions for the other conditions presented here are relatively low.