Validity of coronary heart diseases and heart failure based on hospital discharge and mortality data in the Netherlands using the cardiovascular registry Maastricht cohort study

Abstract

Incidence rates of cardiovascular diseases are often estimated by linkage to hospital discharge and mortality registries. The validity depends on the quality of the registries and the linkage. Therefore, we validated incidence rates of coronary heart disease (CHD), acute myocardial infarction, unstable angina pectoris, and heart failure, estimated by this method, against the disease registry of the cardiovascular registry Maastricht cohort study. The cohort consists of 21,148 persons, born between 1927 and 1977, who were randomly sampled from Maastricht and surrounding communities in 1987-1997. Incident cases were identified by linkage to the Netherlands causes of death registry and either the hospital discharge registry (HDR) or the cardiology information system (CIS) of the University Hospital Maastricht. Sensitivities and positive predictive values were calculated using the CIS-based registry as gold standard. Relatively high sensitivities and positive predictive values were found for CHD (72 and 91%, respectively) and acute myocardial infarction (84 and 97%, respectively). These values were considerably lower for unstable angina pectoris (53 and 78%, respectively) and heart failure (43 and 80%, respectively). A substantial number of cases (14-47%) were found only in the CISbased registry, because they were missed or miscoded in the HDR-based registry. As a consequence, the incidence rates in the HDR-based registry were considerably lower than in the CIS-based registry, especially for unstable angina pectoris and heart failure. Incidence rates based on hospital discharge and mortality data may underestimate the true incidence rates, especially for unstable angina pectoris and heart failure.

Novel Biomarkers to Improve the Prediction of Cardiovascular Event Risk in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

“…In a subsample of the cohort, cases of coronary heart disease (CHD; defined as International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision [ICD‐9] codes 410–414) obtained from hospital discharge diagnoses were verified against medical records. This showed that 85% of CHD events and 97% of acute myocardial infarctions could be confirmed 15. Follow‐up was complete until January 1, 2008.…”

Increased incidence of subarachnoid hemorrhage during cold temperatures and influenza epidemics

“…Another strength of our study is the use of reliable and validated registries such as the NIVEL influenza-like illness registry, the Dutch HDR and CDR, and the ECA data set of daily temperature values. 12,28,33,34,38,45,56 Another strength of our study is the analysis, in which we used 1) population-based SAH incidence data from 12 European countries and 2) data on mean daily temperature from the ECA data set, to confirm the association between cold temperature and SAH found in our nationwide analyses. A limitation of the present study may be that we only used daily temperature data from European countries, which might affect the generalizability of our findings to non-European populations.…”

Plasma Advanced Glycation End Products Are Associated With Incident Cardiovascular Events in Individuals With Type 2 Diabetes: A Case-Cohort Study With a Median Follow-up of 10 Years (EPIC-NL)

“…Therefore, for outcomes with many minor events, we may underestimate the associations, as misclassification is more likely than for outcomes with more severe events. This may have resulted in weaker associations (39), which may not necessarily reflect a weaker biological association.…”