Selection of Medical Diagnostic Codes for Analysis of Electronic Patient Records. Application to Stroke in a Primary Care Database

摘要

BackgroundElectronic patient records from primary care databases are increasingly used in public health and health services research but methods used to identify cases with disease are not well described. This study aimed to evaluate the relevance of different codes for the identification of acute stroke in a primary care database, and to evaluate trends in the use of different codes over time.