Nicola Fawcett, Bernadette Young, Leon Peto, T Phuong Quan, Richard Gillott, Jianhua Wu, Chris Middlemass, Sheila Weston, Derrick W Crook, Tim E A Peto, Berit Muller-Pebody, Alan P Johnson, A Sarah Walker, Jonathan A T Sandoe
BACKGROUND: Diagnostic codes from electronic health records are widely used to assess patterns of disease. Infective endocarditis is an uncommon but serious infection, with objective diagnostic criteria. Electronic health records have been used to explore the impact of changing guidance on antibiotic prophylaxis for dental procedures on incidence, but limited data on the accuracy of the diagnostic codes exists. Endocarditis was used as a clinically relevant case study to investigate the relationship between clinical cases and diagnostic codes, to understand discrepancies and to improve design of future studies...
September 4, 2019: BMC Medicine