What is the 'real' admission rate of acute pancreatitis in a regional Australian population?

Conclusions. In this clinical setting, admissions for acute pancreatitis are grossly underestimated by the standard case ascertainment method. The reasons for this are not clear. Hospital discharge records are nevertheless more effective than prospective case ascertainment for certain cases, such as brief admissions and those in holiday periods. What is known about the topic? Capture-recapture analysis was originally developed in animal ecology, but has since been used to estimate both prevalent and incident cases of human disease. What does this paper add? This study exposes possible deficiencies in the single-source case ascertainment methods used by most hospitals to enumerate incident cases. It is the first time that capture-recapture techniques have been used to estimate acute pancreatitis admissions. What are the implications for practitioners? To obtain accurate admissions estimates for diseases such as acute pancreatitis, capture-recapture analysis with multiple data sources is advisable. One possible solution may be to conduct intermittent prospective censuses to complement existing retrospective ascertainment methods. On a more general level, clinical staff should be better trained to provide more accurate and detailed information in case records. PMID: 23497737 [PubMed - in process]
Source: Australian Health Review - Category: Hospital Management Authors: Tags: Aust Health Rev Source Type: research