Are routinely collected NHS administrative records suitable for endpoint identification in clinical trials? Evidence from the West of Scotland Coronary Prevention Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Routinely collected electronic patient records are already widely used in epidemiological research. In this work we investigated the potential for using them to identify endpoints in clinical trials.

Methods

The events recorded in the West of Scotland Coronary Prevention Study (WOSCOPS), a large clinical trial of pravastatin in middle-aged hypercholesterolaemic men in the 1990s, were compared with those in the record-linked deaths and hospitalisations records routinely collected in Scotland.

Results

We matched 99% of fatal study events by date. We showed excellent matching (97%) of the causes of fatal endpoint events and good matching (>80% for first events) of the causes of nonfatal endpoint events with a slightly lower rate of mismatching of record linkag

SUBMITTER: Barry SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3772901 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature