Patient-doctor concordance in elderly women's self-reported health and medical records.
OBJECTIVE
To compare the chronic diseases mentioned by elderly women in an interview study with those documented in their respective medical records.


METHODS
The prevalence of positive diagnoses, overall agreement, and the kappa-coefficient were calculated for each group of diagnoses.


RESULTS
The lowest overall agreement was observed for psychiatric diseases, followed by diseases of the gastrointestinal system. Poor chance-adjusted agreement was found concerning diseases of the gastrointestinal system and diseases of the skin.


CONCLUSIONS
The results suggest that a main reason for discordance was that the elderly women feared "losing face" by reporting some diseases.
Ockander
M
M
Department of Social Medicine and Public Health Sciences, Linköping University, Sweden. maroc@ihm.liu.se
Hjerppe
M
M
Timpka
T
T
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003657:Decision Making; D003933:Diagnosis; D003953:Diagnosis-Related Groups; D005194:Family Practice; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008487:Medical History Taking; D008499:Medical Records; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013548:Sweden