Using routinely collected electronic healthcare record data to investigate fibrotic multimorbidity in England
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Background: Electronic healthcare records (EHRs) are used to document diagnoses, symptoms, tests, and prescriptions. Though not primarily collected for research purposes; owing to the size of the data as well as the depth of information collected, they have been used extensively to conduct epidemiological research. The Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) is an EHR database containing representative data of the UK population with regards to age, sex, race, and social deprivation measures. Fibrotic conditions are characterised by excessive scarring, contributing towards organ dysfunction and eventual organ failure. Fibrosis is associated with ageing as well as many other factors, it is hypothesised that fibrotic conditions are caused by the same underlying pathological mechanism. We calculated the prevalence of fibrotic conditions (as defined in a previous Delphi survey of clinicians) as well as the prevalence of fibrotic multimorbidity (the proportion of people with multiple fibrotic conditions).
Methods: We included a random sample of 993,370 UK adults, alive, and enrolled at a UK general practice providing data to the CPRD Aurum database as of 1st of January 2015. Individuals had to be eligible for linkage to hospital episode statistics (HES) and ONS death registration. We calculated point prevalence of fibrotic conditions and multi-morbid fibrosis on the 1st of January 2015. Using death records of those who died in 2015, we investigated prevalence of fibrosis associated death. We explored the most commonly co-occurring fibrotic conditions and determined the settings in which diagnoses were commonly made (primary care, secondary care or after death).
Results: The point prevalence of any fibrotic condition was 21.46%. In total 6.00% of people had fibrotic multimorbidity. Of the people who died in 2015, 34.82% had a recording of a fibrotic condition listed on their death certificate.
Conclusion: The key finding was that fibrotic multimorbidity affects approximately 1 in 16 people
Methods: We included a random sample of 993,370 UK adults, alive, and enrolled at a UK general practice providing data to the CPRD Aurum database as of 1st of January 2015. Individuals had to be eligible for linkage to hospital episode statistics (HES) and ONS death registration. We calculated point prevalence of fibrotic conditions and multi-morbid fibrosis on the 1st of January 2015. Using death records of those who died in 2015, we investigated prevalence of fibrosis associated death. We explored the most commonly co-occurring fibrotic conditions and determined the settings in which diagnoses were commonly made (primary care, secondary care or after death).
Results: The point prevalence of any fibrotic condition was 21.46%. In total 6.00% of people had fibrotic multimorbidity. Of the people who died in 2015, 34.82% had a recording of a fibrotic condition listed on their death certificate.
Conclusion: The key finding was that fibrotic multimorbidity affects approximately 1 in 16 people
Date Issued
2024
Date Acceptance
2024-05-23
Citation
Clinical Epidemiology, 2024, 16, pp.433-443
ISSN
1179-1349
Publisher
Dove Medical Press
Start Page
433
End Page
443
Journal / Book Title
Clinical Epidemiology
Volume
16
Copyright Statement
© 2024 Massen et al. This work is published by Dove Medical Press Limited, and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. The full terms of the License areavailable at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authorand source are credited.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.2147/CLEP.S463499
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2024-06-24