Incidence of hospital admission does not equal incidence of disease

doi:10.1136/bmj.320.7244.1277

BMJ 2000;320:1277 ( 6 May )

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Incidence of hospital admission does not equal incidence of disease

Conclusions drawn from data are incorrect

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Conclusions drawn from data are incorrect

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ We are concerned about Gaist and colleagues' methods and feel that the conclusions they draw from their data are incorrect.¹

The diagnosis of subarachnoid haemorrhage was validated in a sample from only one county. Is Funen County representative ofDenmark, and how was it selected? Hospitals with 10 or fewer registeredpatients in the study period were excluded. Why was it appropriateto exclude the smaller hospitals when they may be a source ofpatients with particularly low predictive value for a registereddiagnosis of subarachnoidhaemorrhage?

The cohort of first degree relatives was overwhelmingly made up of children, and they were the only group in table 2 for whomthe incidence rate ratios were significantly different from 1.The main problem with the study is one that plagues much of theliterature on subarachnoid haemorrhage $---$ it was hospital based.The strongest predictor of survival in subarachnoid haemorrhageis age. . . . [Full text of this article]

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Risk of subarachnoid haemorrhage in first degree relatives of patients with subarachnoid haemorrhage: follow up study based on national registries in Denmark: David Gaist, Michael Væth, Ioannis Tsiropoulos, Kaare Christensen, Elisabeth Corder, Jørn Olsen, and Henrik Toft Sørensen
BMJ 2000 320: 141-145. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]