The Challenges of Identifying Patients With Peripheral Artery Disease Utilizing Administrative Databases

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) carries a high burden of morbidity when identified in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). However, identification of patients with concomitant CAD and PAD remains challenging. Using linked administrative databases of 207,026 individuals with CAD between 2002 and 2019 (median follow-up, 4.7 years), a model for PAD was applied to identify baseline PAD and the development of PAD during follow-up. Both baseline PAD and future PAD models demonstrated poor calibration and discrimination (c-statistic 0.618 and 0.583). In the absence of additional variables, the present models are unable to identify patients with concomitant CAD and PAD.