Accuracy of identifying incident stroke cases from linked healthcare data in UK Biobank

Objective: In UK Biobank (UKB), a large population-based prospective study, cases of many diseases are ascertained through linkage to routinely collected, coded national health datasets. We assessed the accuracy of these for identifying incident strokes.

Methods: In a regional UKB sub-population (n=17,249), we identified all participants with ≥1 code signifying a first stroke after recruitment (incident stroke-coded cases) in linked hospital admission, primary care or death record data. Stroke physicians reviewed their full electronic patient records (EPRs) and generated reference standard diagnoses. We evaluated the number and proportion of cases that were true positives (i.e. positive predictive value, PPV) for all codes combined and by code source and type.

Results: Of 232 incident stroke-coded cases, 97% had EPR information available. Data sources were: 30% hospital admission only; 39% primary care only; 28% hospital and primary care; 3% death records only. While 42% of cases ...