title: Low Completeness of Bacteraemia Registration in the Danish National Patient Registry.
abstract: Bacteraemia is associated with significant morbidity and mortality and timely access to relia-ble information is essential for health care administrators. Therefore, we investigated the complete-ness of bacteraemia registration in the Danish National Patient Registry (DNPR) containing hospital discharge diagnoses and surgical procedures for all non-psychiatric patients. As gold standard we identified bacteraemia patients in three defined areas of Denmark (~2.3 million inhabitants) from 2000 through 2011 by use of blood culture data retrieved from electronic microbiology databases. Diagnoses coded according to the International Classification of Diseases, version 10, and surgical procedure codes were retrieved from the DNPR. The codes were categorized into seven groups, ranked a priori according to the likelihood of bacteraemia. Completeness was analysed by contin-gency tables, for all patients and subgroups. We identified 58,139 bacteraemic episodes in 48,450 patients; 37,740 episodes (64.9%) were covered by one or more discharge diagnoses within the sev-en diagnosis/surgery groups and 18,786 episodes (32.3%) had a code within the highest priority group. Completeness varied substantially according to speciality (from 17.9% for surgical to 36.4% for medical), place of acquisition (from 26.0% for nosocomial to 36.2% for community), and mi-croorganism (from 19.5% for anaerobic Gram-negative bacteria to 36.8% for haemolytic strepto-cocci). The completeness increased from 25.1% in 2000 to 35.1% in 2011. In conclusion, one third of the bacteraemic episodes did not have a relevant diagnosis in the Danish administrative registry recording all non-psychiatric contacts. This source of information should be used cautiously to iden-tify patients with bacteraemia.
authors.affiliation: Center for Clinical Epidemiology, South, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark; Research Unit of Clinical Epidemiology, Institute of Clinical Research, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.
authors.forename: Kim Oren
authors.initials: KO
authors.lastname: Gradel
authors.affiliation: Center for Clinical Epidemiology, South, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark; Department of Infectious Diseases, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark.
authors.forename: Stig Lønberg
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Nielsen
authors.affiliation: Department of Infectious Diseases, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark.
authors.forename: Court
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pedersen
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Microbiology, Copenhagen University Hospital, Hvidovre Hospital, Hvidovre, Denmark.
authors.forename: Jenny Dahl
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Knudsen
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Microbiology, Copenhagen University Hospital, Hvidovre Hospital, Hvidovre, Denmark.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Østergaard
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Microbiology, Copenhagen University Hospital, Herlev Hospital, Herlev, Denmark.
authors.forename: Magnus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Arpi
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Microbiology, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark.
authors.forename: Thøger Gorm
authors.initials: TG
authors.lastname: Jensen
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Microbiology, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark.
authors.forename: Hans Jørn
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Kolmos
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Institute of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark.
authors.forename: Mette
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Søgaard
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark.
authors.forename: Annmarie Touborg
authors.initials: AT
authors.lastname: Lassen
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Microbiology, Aalborg University Hospital, Aalborg, Denmark; Department of Clinical Medicine, Aalborg University, Aalborg Denmark.
authors.forename: Henrik Carl
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Schønheyder
mesh_terms: D016470:Bacteremia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000401:mortality / Q000628:therapy; D016208:Databases, Factual; D003718:Denmark / Q000453:epidemiology; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D009026:Mortality; D016017:Odds Ratio; D012042:Registries