Using Administrative Data to Better Treat Chronic Limb Threatening Ischemia

Chronic limb threatening ischemia (CLTI) is the most severe manifestation of peripheral arterial disease and represents a particularly high-risk subgroup of patients. As such, efforts to better understand this complex patient population through well-designed clinical research studies are critical to improving CLTI care. Prospective randomized clinical trials (RCTs) remain the gold standard in clinical research, but these trials are resource-intensive and have highly selective patient populations, which limit their feasibility and generalizability. Alternatively, retrospective studies are less expensive than RCTs, have a larger sample size, and are more generalizable owing to a broader patient population. Health care administrative data provide rich sources of information that may be used for research purposes and are increasingly being used for the study of vascular surgery conditions, including CLTI. Although administrative data are collected for billing purposes, they may be leveraged to study a broad range of topics in vascular surgery including those related to health care delivery, epidemiology, health disparities, and outcomes. This review provides an overview of administrative data available for CLTI research, the strengths and limitations of these data sources, current areas of investigation, and future opportunities for further study with the goal of improving outcomes in this high-risk population.