Data quality and 30-day survival for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the UK out-of-hospital cardiac arrest registry: a data linkage study

Sangeerthana Rajagopal; Scott J Booth; Terry P Brown; Chen Ji; Claire Hawkes; A Niroshan Siriwardena; Kim Kirby; Sarah Black; Robert Spaight; Imogen Gunson; Samantha J Brace-McDonnell; Gavin D Perkins; OHCAO collaborators

doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2017-017784

Data quality and 30-day survival for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the UK out-of-hospital cardiac arrest registry: a data linkage study

BMJ Open. 2017 Nov 20;7(11):e017784. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2017-017784.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Warwick Clinical Trials Unit, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
² Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham, UK.
³ School of Health and Social Care, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK.
⁴ South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, Exeter, UK.
⁵ East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust, Nottingham, UK.
⁶ West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, Brierley Hill, UK.

Abstract

Objectives: The Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Outcomes (OHCAO) project aims to understand the epidemiology and outcomes of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) across the UK. This data linkage study is a subproject of OHCAO. The aim was to establish the feasibility of linking OHCAO data to National Health Service (NHS) patient demographic data and Office for National Statistics (ONS) date of death data held on the NHS Personal Demographics Service (PDS) database to improve OHCAO demographic data quality and enable analysis of 30-day survival from OHCA.

Design and setting: Data were collected from 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2014 as part of a prospective, observational study of OHCA attended by 10 English NHS Ambulance Services. 28 729 OHCA cases had resuscitation attempted by Emergency Medical Services and were included in the study. Data linkage was carried out using a data linkage service provided by NHS Digital, a national provider of health-related data. To assess data linkage feasibility a random sample of 3120 cases was selected. The sample was securely transferred to NHS Digital to be matched using OHCAO patient demographic data to return previously missing demographic data and provide ONS date of death data.

Results: A total of 2513 (80.5%) OHCAO cases were matched to patients in the NHS PDS database. Using the linkage process, missing demographic data were retrieved for 1636 (72.7%) out of 2249 OHCAO cases that had previously incomplete demographic data. Returned ONS date of death data allowed analysis of 30-day survival status. The results showed a 30-day survival rate of 9.3%, reducing unknown survival status from 46.1% to 8.5%.

Conclusions: In this sample, data linkage between the OHCAO registry and NHS PDS database was shown to be feasible, improving demographic data quality and allowing analysis of 30-day survival status.

Keywords: cardiac arrest; emergency medical services; medical record linkage; out-of-hospital cardiac arrest; resuscitation.

Publication types

Observational Study

MeSH terms

Data Accuracy*
Databases as Topic
Feasibility Studies
Humans
Information Storage and Retrieval / methods*
Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest / epidemiology*
Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest / mortality
Prospective Studies
Registries
State Medicine
Survival Rate*
United Kingdom / epidemiology