Inaccuracies in ICD Coding for Obesity Would Be Expected to Bias Administrative Database Spine Studies Toward Overestimating the Impact of Obesity on Perioperative Adverse Outcomes

Conclusion. ICD codes for obesity are more commonly assigned to patients with other comorbidities or postoperative complications. Further, use of such nonrandomly assigned ICD codes for obesity has the potential to skew studies to suggest greater associated adverse events than calculated BMI would demonstrate. Level of Evidence: 3
Source: Spine - Category: Orthopaedics Tags: Epidemiology Source Type: research