Regional Differences in Thrombectomy Rates : Secondary use of Billing Codes in the MIRACUM (Medical Informatics for Research and Care in University Medicine) Consortium

Predictors of post-stroke delirium incidence and duration: Results of a prospective observational study using high-frequency delirium screening

BACKGROUND

Post-stroke delirium (PSD) is a modifiable predictor for worse outcome in stroke. Knowledge of its risk factors would facilitate clinical management of affected patients, but recently updated national guidelines consider available evidence insufficient.

AIMS

The study aimed to establish risk factors for PSD incidence and duration using high-frequency screening.

METHODS

We prospectively investigated patients with ischemic stroke admitted within 24 h. Patients were screened twice daily for the presence of PSD throughout the treatment period. Sociodemographic, treatment-related, and neuroimaging characteristics were evaluated as predictors of either PSD incidence (odds ratios (OR)) or duration (PSD days/unit of the predictor, b), using logistic and linear regression models, respectively.

RESULTS

PSD occurred in 55/141 patients (age = 73.8 ± 10.4 years, 61 female, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) = 6.4 ± 6.5). Age (odds ratio (OR) = 1.06 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.02-1.10), b = 0.08 (95% CI = 0.04-0.13)), and male gender (b = 0.99 (95% CI = 0.05-1.93)) were significant non-modifiable risk factors. In a multivariable model adjusted for age and gender, presence of pain (OR < sub > mvar </sub >= 1.75 (95% CI = 1.12-2.74)), urinary catheter (OR < sub > mvar </sub > = 3.16 (95% CI = 1.10-9.14)) and post-stroke infection (PSI; OR < sub > mvar </sub > = 4.43 (95% CI = 1.09-18.01)) were predictors of PSD incidence. PSD duration was impacted by presence of pain (b < sub > mvar </sub >= 0.49 (95% CI = 0.19-0.81)), urinary catheter (b < sub > mvar </sub > = 1.03 (95% CI = 0.01-2.07)), intravenous line (b < sub > mvar </sub >= 0.36 (95% CI = 0.16-0.57)), and PSI (b < sub > mvar </sub >= 1.60 (95% CI = 0.42-2.78)). PSD (OR = 3.53 (95% CI = 1.48-5.57)) and PSI (OR = 5.29 (95% CI = 2.92-7.66)) independently predicted inferior NIHSS at discharge. Insular and basal ganglia lesions increased the PSD risk about four- to eight-fold.

DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION

This study identified modifiable risk factors, the management of which might reduce the negative impact PSD has on outcome.

Regional Disparity of Reperfusion Therapy for Acute Ischemic Stroke in Japan: A Retrospective Analysis of Nationwide Claims Data from 2010 to 2015

Background

We aimed to determine whether a regional disparity exists in usage of reperfusion therapy (intravenous recombinant tissue plasminogen activator [IV rt‐PA] and endovascular thrombectomy [EVT]) and post‐reperfusion 30‐day mortality in patients with acute ischemic stroke, and which regional factors are associated with their usage.

Methods and Results

We retrospectively investigated 69 948 patients (mean age±SD, 74.9±12.0 years; women, 41.4%) with acute ischemic stroke treated with reperfusion therapy between April 2010 and March 2016 in Japan using nationwide claims data. Regional disparity was evaluated using Gini coefficients for age‐ and sex‐adjusted usage of reperfusion therapy and 30‐day post‐reperfusion in‐hospital death ratio in 47 administrative regions. The association between regional factors and reperfusion therapy usage was evaluated with fixed‐effects regression models. During the study period, Gini coefficients showed low inequality (0.11–0.15) for use of IV rt‐PA monotherapy and IV rt‐PA and/or EVT and extreme inequality (0.49) for EVT usage in 2010, which became moderate inequality (0.25) by 2015. The densities of stroke centers and endovascular specialists, as well as market concentration, were associated with increased usage of reperfusion therapy whereas the proportion of rural residents and delayed ambulance transport were negatively associated with usage. Inequality in the standardized death ratio after EVT was extreme (0.86) in 2010 but became moderate (0.29) by 2015; inequality was low to moderate (0.17–0.23) for IV rt‐PA monotherapy and IV rt‐PA and/or EVT.

Conclusions

Scrutinizing existing data sources revealed regional disparity in reperfusion therapy for acute ischemic stroke and its associated regional factors in Japan.

Linking a Consortium-Wide Data Quality Assessment Tool with the MIRACUM Metadata Repository

Background  Many research initiatives aim at using data from electronic health records (EHRs) in observational studies. Participating sites of the German Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) established data integration centers to integrate EHR data within research data repositories to support local and federated analyses. To address concerns regarding possible data quality (DQ) issues of hospital routine data compared with data specifically collected for scientific purposes, we have previously presented a data quality assessment (DQA) tool providing a standardized approach to assess DQ of the research data repositories at the MIRACUM consortium's partner sites.

Objectives  Major limitations of the former approach included manual interpretation of the results and hard coding of analyses, making their expansion to new data elements and databases time-consuming and error prone. We here present an enhanced version of the DQA tool by linking it to common data element definitions stored in a metadata repository (MDR), adopting the harmonized DQA framework from Kahn et al and its application within the MIRACUM consortium.

Methods  Data quality checks were consequently aligned to a harmonized DQA terminology. Database-specific information were systematically identified and represented in an MDR. Furthermore, a structured representation of logical relations between data elements was developed to model plausibility-statements in the MDR.

Results  The MIRACUM DQA tool was linked to data element definitions stored in a consortium-wide MDR. Additional databases used within MIRACUM were linked to the DQ checks by extending the respective data elements in the MDR with the required information. The evaluation of DQ checks was automated. An adaptable software implementation is provided with the R package DQAstats .

Conclusion  The enhancements of the DQA tool facilitate the future integration of new data elements and make the tool scalable to other databases and data models. It has been provided to all ten MIRACUM partners and was successfully deployed and integrated into their respective data integration center infrastructure.

Clinical observation of thrombolytic effect of alteplase combined with butylphthalide in patients with acute anterior circulation cerebral infarction

Objective:

This study aims to evaluate the clinical effect of alteplase combined with butylphthalide in treating patients with acute anterior circulation cerebral infarction.

Methods:

Retrospective study methods were used. Eighty patient cases with acute anterior circulation cerebral infarction treated in Baoding First Central Hospital, China from January 2018 to December 2020 were randomly and averagely divided into two groups. Patients in the two groups were given symptomatic treatment. Patients in the experimental group were treated with alteplase combined with butylphthalide for thrombolytic therapy, whereas patients in the control group were treated with urokinase thrombolytic therapy. The NIHSS score, effective rates and neurological function recovery were analysed one day, seven days and 30 days after treatment were analyzed, respectively. So as the incidence of adverse reactions within seven days after drug adminutesistration.

Results:

The NIHSS scores of the two groups were significantly lower than those before treatment on one day, seven days and 30 days after treatment (experimental group, p=0.00; control group, p=0.02). The experimental group was more significantly lower than the control group (p=0.00). The effective rate of the experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group (p=0.03), and the recovery rate after treatment was significantly higher than that of the control group (p=0.04). Within one week after treatment, the complication rate was 15% in the experimental group and 20% in the control group but was not significantly different (p=0.56).

Conclusion:

Alteplase combined with butylphthalide is effective and safe in the treatment of acute anterior circulation cerebral infarction without obvious complications.

Reduced Rate of Inpatient Hospital Admissions in 18 German University Hospitals During the COVID-19 Lockdown

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused strains on health systems worldwide disrupting routine hospital services for all non-COVID patients. Within this retrospective study, we analyzed inpatient hospital admissions across 18 German university hospitals during the 2020 lockdown period compared to 2018. Patients admitted to hospital between January 1 and May 31, 2020 and the corresponding periods in 2018 and 2019 were included in this study. Data derived from electronic health records were collected and analyzed using the data integration center infrastructure implemented in the university hospitals that are part of the four consortia funded by the German Medical Informatics Initiative. Admissions were grouped and counted by ICD 10 chapters and specific reasons for treatment at each site. Pooled aggregated data were centrally analyzed with descriptive statistics to compare absolute and relative differences between time periods of different years. The results illustrate how care process adoptions depended on the COVID-19 epidemiological situation and the criticality of the disease. Overall inpatient hospital admissions decreased by 35% in weeks 1 to 4 and by 30.3% in weeks 5 to 8 after the lockdown announcement compared to 2018. Even hospital admissions for critical care conditions such as malignant cancer treatments were reduced. We also noted a high reduction of emergency admissions such as myocardial infarction (38.7%), whereas the reduction in stroke admissions was smaller (19.6%). In contrast, we observed a considerable reduction in admissions for non-critical clinical situations, such as hysterectomies for benign tumors (78.8%) and hip replacements due to arthrosis (82.4%). In summary, our study shows that the university hospital admission rates in Germany were substantially reduced following the national COVID-19 lockdown. These included critical care or emergency conditions in which deferral is expected to impair clinical outcomes. Future studies are needed to delineate how appropriate medical care of critically ill patients can be maintained during a pandemic.

Thrombectomy in Childhood Stroke

Background Several randomized trials have shown the efficacy of thrombectomy for large intracranial vessel occlusions in adults. However, the safety and efficacy of thrombectomy in children are unknown. We aimed to investigate the feasibility and outcome of thrombectomy in pediatric patients. Methods and Results We performed a retrospective analysis of all children (<18 years of age) who presented with large-vessel occlusion and were treated with mechanical thrombectomy at 3 German tertiary-care stroke centers. Interventional results and clinical outcomes were assessed using the Pediatric National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale at 24 hours and on day 7 after thrombectomy as well as after 3 months (modified Rankin Scale). After screening of local registries for all performed thrombectomies, 12 children were included. Median Pediatric National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score on admission was 12.5 (interquartile range 8.0-21.5). Angiographic outcomes for thrombectomy were good in all patients (6×modified Treatment in Cerebral Infarction Score 3, 6×modified Treatment in Cerebral Infarction Score 2b). Moreover, most patients showed an improvement of neurological outcome after thrombectomy with a median Pediatric National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale of 3.5 (interquartile range 1-8) at day 7 and a modified Rankin Scale of 1.0 (interquartile range 0-2.0) at 3 months. No major periprocedural complications were observed. Conclusions In our retrospective study thrombectomy was safe in childhood stroke, and treated children had good neurological outcomes.

Modeling the Optimal Transportation for Acute Stroke Treatment: The Impact of the Drip-and-Drive Paradigm

Background and Purpose- Health systems are faced with the challenge of ensuring fast access to appropriate therapy for patients with acute stroke. The paradigms primarily discussed are mothership and drip and ship. Less attention has been focused on the drip-and-drive (DD) paradigm. Our aim was to analyze whether and under what conditions DD would predict the greatest probability of good outcome for patients with suspected ischemic stroke in Northwestern Germany. Methods- Conditional probability models based on the decay curves for endovascular therapy and intravenous thrombolysis were created to determine the best transport paradigm, and results were displayed using map visualizations. Our study area consisted of the federal states of Lower Saxony, Hamburg, and Schleswig-Holstein in Northwestern Germany covering an area of 64 065 km² with a population of 12 703 561 in 2017 (198 persons per km²). In several scenarios, the catchment area, that is, the region that would result in the greatest probability of good outcomes, was calculated for each of the mothership, drip-and-ship, and the DD paradigms. Several different treatment time parameters were varied including onset-to-first-medical-response time, ambulance-on-scene time, door-to-needle time at primary stroke center, needle-to-door time, door-to-needle time at comprehensive stroke center, door-to-groin-puncture time, needle-to-interventionalist-leave time, and interventionalist-arrival-to-groin-puncture time. Results- The mothership paradigm had the largest catchment area; however, the DD catchment area was larger than the drip-and-ship catchment area so long as the needle-to-interventionalist-leave time and the interventionalist-arrival-to-groin-puncture time remain <40 minutes each. A slowed workflow in the DD paradigm resulted in a decrease of the DD catchment area to 1221 km² (2%). Conclusions- Our study suggests the largest catchment area for the mothership paradigm and a larger catchment area of DD paradigm compared with the drip-and-ship paradigm in Northwestern Germany in most scenarios. The existence of different paradigms allows the spread of capacities, shares the cost and hospital income, and gives primary stroke centers the possibility to provide endovascular therapy services 24/7.

EMR-integrated minimal core dataset for routine health care and multiple research settings: A case study for neuroinflammatory demyelinating diseases

Although routine health care and clinical trials usually require the documentation of similar information, data collection is performed independently from each other, resulting in redundant documentation efforts. Standardizing routine documentation can enable secondary use for medical research. Neuroinflammatory demyelinating diseases (NIDs) represent a heterogeneous group of diseases requiring further research to improve patient management. The aim of this work is to develop, implement and evaluate a minimal core dataset in routine health care with a focus on secondary use as case study for NIDs. Therefore, a draft minimal core dataset for NIDs was created by analyzing routine, clinical trial, registry, biobank documentation and existing data standards for NIDs. Data elements (DEs) were converted into the standard format Operational Data Model, semantically annotated and analyzed via frequency analysis. The analysis produced 1958 DEs based on 864 distinct medical concepts. After review and finalization by an interdisciplinary team of neurologists, epidemiologists and medical computer scientists, the minimal core dataset (NID CDEs) consists of 46 common DEs capturing disease-specific information for reuse in the discharge letter and other research settings. It covers the areas of diagnosis, laboratory results, disease progress, expanded disability status scale, therapy and magnetic resonance imaging findings. NID CDEs was implemented in two German university hospitals and a usability study in clinical routine was conducted (participants n = 16) showing a good usability (Mean SUS = 75). From May 2017 to February 2018, 755 patients were documented with the NID CDEs, which indicates the feasibility of developing a minimal core dataset for structured documentation based on previously used documentation standards and integrating the dataset into clinical routine. By sharing, translating and reusing the minimal dataset, a transnational harmonized documentation of patients with NIDs might be realized, supporting interoperability in medical research.

MIRACUM: Medical Informatics in Research and Care in University Medicine

INTRODUCTION

This article is part of the Focus Theme of Methods of Information in Medicine on the German Medical Informatics Initiative. Similar to other large international data sharing networks (e.g. OHDSI, PCORnet, eMerge, RD-Connect) MIRACUM is a consortium of academic and hospital partners as well as one industrial partner in eight German cities which have joined forces to create interoperable data integration centres (DIC) and make data within those DIC available for innovative new IT solutions in patient care and medical research.

OBJECTIVES

Sharing data shall be supported by common interoperable tools and services, in order to leverage the power of such data for biomedical discovery and moving towards a learning health system. This paper aims at illustrating the major building blocks and concepts which MIRACUM will apply to achieve this goal.

GOVERNANCE AND POLICIES

Besides establishing an efficient governance structure within the MIRACUM consortium (based on the steering board, a central administrative office, the general MIRACUM assembly, six working groups and the international scientific advisory board), defining DIC governance rules and data sharing policies, as well as establishing (at each MIRACUM DIC site, but also for MIRACUM in total) use and access committees are major building blocks for the success of such an endeavor.

ARCHITECTURAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY

The MIRACUM DIC architecture builds on a comprehensive ecosystem of reusable open source tools (MIRACOLIX), which are linkable and interoperable amongst each other, but also with the existing software environment of the MIRACUM hospitals. Efficient data protection measures, considering patient consent, data harmonization and a MIRACUM metadata repository as well as a common data model are major pillars of this framework. The methodological approach for shared data usage relies on a federated querying and analysis concept.

USE CASES

MIRACUM aims at proving the value of their DIC with three use cases: IT support for patient recruitment into clinical trials, the development and routine care implementation of a clinico-molecular predictive knowledge tool, and molecular-guided therapy recommendations in molecular tumor boards.

RESULTS

Based on the MIRACUM DIC release in the nine months conceptual phase first large scale analysis for stroke and colorectal cancer cohorts have been pursued.

DISCUSSION

Beyond all technological challenges successfully applying the MIRACUM tools for the enrichment of our knowledge about diagnostic and therapeutic concepts, thus supporting the concept of a Learning Health System will be crucial for the acceptance and sustainability in the medical community and the MIRACUM university hospitals.