Epidemiol Health.  2013;35:e2013006.

The Validity and Reliability of Characterizing Epilepsy Based on an External Review of Medical Records

• Kang BS
• Cheong HK
• Jung KY
• Jang SH
• Yoo JK
• Kim DW
• Chung SE
• Lee SY

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
Our goal is to validate diagnosing and characterizing epilepsy based on a medical record survey by external reviewers.
METHODS
We reviewed medical records from 80 patients who received antiepileptic drugs in 2009 at two hospitals. The study consisted of two steps; data abstraction by certified health record administrators and then verification by the investigators. The gold standard was the results of the survey performed by the epileptologists from their own hospital.
RESULTS
The specificity was more than 90.0% for diagnosis and activity, and for new-onset seizures. The sensitivity was 97.0% or more for diagnosis and activity and 66.7-75.0% for new-onset epilepsy. This method accurately classified epileptic syndromes in 90.2-92.9% of patients, causes in 85.4-92.7%, and age of onset in 78.0-81.0%. Kappa statistics for inter-rater reliability and test-retest reliability ranged from 0.641-0.975, which means substantial to near-perfect agreement in all items.
CONCLUSIONS
Our data suggest that epilepsy can be well identified by external review of medical records. This method may be useful as a basis for large-scale epidemiological research.

Keyword

Validity; Epilepsy; Epidemiology; Sensitivity; Specificity; Reliability

MeSH Terms

Administrative Personnel
Age of Onset
Anticonvulsants
Epilepsy
Humans
Medical Records
Reproducibility of Results
Research Personnel
Seizures
Sensitivity and Specificity
Anticonvulsants