Spousal bereavement, mortality and risk of negative health outcomes among older adults: a population-based study

Lucas Morin; Jonas W Wastesson; Stefan Fors; Neda Agahi; Kristina Johnell

Self-controlled cohort crossover study Figure 3 shows the relative incidence ratio (RIR) for acute cardiovascular events, hip fractures, pneumonia and self-harm during the different hazard periods before and after spousal loss, compared with the reference period T0 (i.e. 18 to 12 months before spousal loss). We observed an increase in the relative incidence ratio for all four outcomes, starting around 6 months before spousal loss and reaching a peak during the 6 months after. Hence, while between T0 and T3 the incidence rate of acute cardiovascular events increased from 20.3 to 36.1 per 1000 person-years among the bereaved cases, it increased from 20.6 to 27.8 per 1000 person-years among the married controls (RIR 1.34, 95% CI 1.12-1.60). Detailed results are available in Supplementary Table S13. While the RIR for hip fractures . CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.