Combining Register and Radiological Visits Data Allows to Reliably Identify Incident Wrist Fractures

• Published in: Clinical Epidemiology
• Main Authors: Nissinen,Tomi, Sund,Reijo, Suoranta,Sanna, Kröger,Heikki, Väänänen,Sami
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Dove Press 2023
• Subjects: Clinical Epidemiology; Sund; Sanna; sami
• Online Access: https://www.dovepress.com/combining-register-and-radiological-visits-data-allows-to-reliably-ide-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-CLEP

Tomi Nissinen,1,2 Reijo Sund,3 Sanna Suoranta,2,4 Heikki Kröger,3,5 Sami P Väänänen1,2 1Department of Technical Physics, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland; 2Department of Clinical Radiology, Kuopio University Hospital, Kuopio, Finland; 3Kuopio Musculoskeletal Research Unit, Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland; 4Division of Clinical Radiology, Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland; 5Department of Orthopaedics, Traumatology and Hand Surgery, Kuopio University Hospital, Kuopio, FinlandCorrespondence: Tomi Nissinen, Department of Technical Physics, University of Eastern Finland, PO Box1627, Kuopio, 70211, Finland, Tel +358 40 756 9303, Email [e-mail]: To evaluate how comprehensively wrist fractures can be tracked from the national medical registers, and to propose a method for complementing the register data using time stamps of wrist radiography visits recorded in the radiological image archive.Patients and Methods: For the Kuopio Osteoporosis Risk Factor and Prevention Study (OSTPRE) cohort of 14220 post-menopausal women, we analysed the data from the Care Register for Health Care, Register for Primary Health Care Visits, self-reports, radiological image archive PACS, and patient records to identify the wrist fractures occurred between 2011 and 2021. Using this gold standard of fractures, we validated the coverage of the registers and image archive and created algorithms to automatically identify fracture events from the registers and/or metadata of wrist radiography visits.Results: We show that wrist fractures cannot be comprehensively identified based on national registers. To remedy this, our proposed method of combining register and image archive data can lift the coverage from 81% to 94% and reduce false discoveries from 6% to 2%.Conclusion: The proposed method offers a more reliable way of gathering fracture information. Comprehensive fracture identification is essential in many research ...