The coverage of elective revascularisation procedure codes in the National Finnish Hospital Discharge Register

AbstractIntroduction: Administrative registers provide an attractive data source for real-life effectiveness studies. The validity of coronary artery disease diagnoses in the Finnish National Hospital Discharge Register (HDR) is high but the validity of revascularization procedure codes (percutaneous coronary intervention; PCI and coronary artery bypass grafting; CABG) are unknown.Methods: All elective PCIs (n = 1771) and CABGs (n = 1819), performed at the Heart Center, Kuopio University Hospital, Finland between years 2007 and 2014 were identified from the unit’s Special Electronic Medical Records (sEMR). Personal identity codes were used to link these data to the HDR. Sensitivity was estimated as proportion of operations recorded in sEMR and HDR.Results: With the strictest assumption of exactly the same intervention day in HDR and sEMR, the sensitivity for procedure codes were 84.6% for PCI and 97.1% for CABG, respectively. When a one-day difference was allowed in the dates, the sensitivity increased to...