Validation of the Swedish Quality Register for Ear Surgery - SwedEar

Area of Science:

• Otolaryngology
• Health Informatics
• Medical Quality Improvement

Background:

• The Swedish Quality Register for Ear Surgery (SwedEar) monitors ear surgery procedures and outcomes.
• Data quality is crucial for the value of SwedEar, which had not been previously validated.
• This study aimed to assess SwedEar's data quality, including coverage, completeness, and accuracy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To validate the data quality of the Swedish Quality Register for Ear Surgery (SwedEar).
• To assess the coverage, completeness, and response rate of the SwedEar register.
• To validate the accuracy of physician-reported data within SwedEar.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of SwedEar's completeness, response rate, and missing registrations.
• Comparison of SwedEar data with statistics from The Swedish Otosurgical Society.
• Validation of data accuracy by re-abstracting data from medical records for a sample of cases.
• Calculation of interrater agreement using Cohen's kappa and Gwet's AC1, and reliability using ICC.

Main Results:

• SwedEar achieved 100% coverage, 84% completeness, and a 74% response rate.
• Data accuracy validation identified less than 3% of incorrect or missing variables across 13,530 assessed variables.
• High agreement (Kappa/Gwet's AC1 > 0.80) and reliability (ICC > 0.9) were found for most variables, including audiograms.

Conclusions:

• The validation confirms SwedEar possesses excellent coverage, high completeness, and near-perfect data reliability.
• The data within SwedEar are deemed suitable for both clinical practice and research purposes.
• Continued efforts to enhance data completeness are recommended.