Postal questionnaires identified hospitalizations for self-reported acute myocardial infarction

Area of Science:

• Cardiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health

Background:

• Accurate ascertainment of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is crucial for epidemiological research.
• Self-reported data in cohort studies can be subject to inaccuracies.
• Validating self-reported diagnoses against established registries is essential for data integrity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To validate the accuracy of self-reported acute myocardial infarction (AMI) diagnoses treated in hospital.
• To assess the reliability of postal questionnaires for identifying incident AMI cases in a large cohort.
• To determine the predictive values, sensitivity, and specificity of self-reported AMI data.

Main Methods:

• A representative sample of 9,176 German men and women (aged 25-74) completed a postal questionnaire in 1998.
• Self-reported incident AMI diagnoses were compared against data from the Augsburg Coronary Event Register.
• Statistical analysis included calculation of positive and negative predictive values, sensitivity, and specificity.

Main Results:

• The positive predictive value for self-reported AMI was 71.5% (148 out of 207 reported cases verified).
• The negative predictive value was 100% (3 out of 8,969 non-reporters had AMI).
• High sensitivity (98.0%) and specificity (99.3%) were observed; false positives were often linked to other cardiac hospitalizations.

Conclusions:

• Postal questionnaires are a useful tool for identifying hospitalizations for incident nonfatal AMI in epidemiological cohort studies.
• The low proportion of false negatives supports limiting medical record reviews to positive responders for efficient case ascertainment.
• Self-reported AMI data, when validated, can significantly streamline data collection in large-scale cardiovascular research.