Evaluation of Care and Surveillance of Cardiovascular Disease: Can We Trust Medico-administrative Hospital Data?

Impact of the Commercialization of Three Generic Angiotensin II Receptor Blockers on Adverse Events in Quebec, Canada

“…As well, another limitation inherent to medicoadministrative databases is the lack of clinical data. Even though hospitalizations and pharmaceuticals claims databases are considered highly reliable, 38,40,41 we may overestimate or underestimate our findings. This ecological study was not intended to evaluate outcomes after intergenerics substitutions (eg, from generic A to generic B), interlots substitution of a same drug (eg, from lots A to lots B of brand-name losartan), to compare drug performance, neither controlling for other potential confounders.…”

“…Time series and statistical analyses were highly limited because of lack of power at many points in time, variable denominators because of drug switches, and possibly insensitive coding of each specific diagnosis. 38 The increase in adverse events is highest the first month after generic commercialization and is mitigated after, but some differences persist as rates of adverse events are consistently higher for generic users. The observed excess risk could hypothetically be the reflection of an acute response to bioequivalent, but not identical, generic drugs substitutions for first generics users, inducing acute adverse drug reactions, or lack of efficacy.…”

Trends in prevalence, incidence and mortality of diagnosed and silent coronary heart disease in Quebec

“…28 We used a validated definition of CHD with both diagnosis and treatment codes, which increases the sensitivity and specificity, and relies more on hospitalization data, which have been proven to be useful and reliable. 29 The QICDSS has all the health information about several chronic diseases for almost the ) making our data very representative. This surveillance system has already gathered more than 15 years of data, and as it is an on-going process, future trends can be easily determined and health services adjusted accordingly.…”

A new metric for centralization of ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm repair in large territories

“…Moreover, validity of the hospitalization database has been demonstrated for use in the evaluation and surveillance of cardiovascular disease. 26 Case definition was validated for non-RAAA in one tertiary care hospital and coding may have differed in other centers. However, low-volume centers were contacted and confirmed they had adequate grafts and surgeons performing RAAA repair recently.…”