Performance of ICD-10-CM Diagnosis Codes for Identifying Acute Ischemic Stroke in a National Health Insurance Claims Database

Purpose: The validity of the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) coding for the identification of acute ischemic stroke (AIS) in Taiwan's National Health Insurance claims database has not been investigated. This study aimed to construct and validate the case definition algorithms for AIS based on ICD-10-CM diagnostic codes.

Patients and methods: This study identified all hospitalizations with ICD-10-CM code of I63* in any position of the discharge diagnoses from the inpatient claims database and all patients with a final diagnosis of AIS from the stroke registry between Jan 2018 and Dec 2019. Hospitalizations in the claims data that could be successfully linked to those in the registry data were regarded as true episodes of AIS. Otherwise, their electronic medical records and images were manually reviewed to ascertain whether they were true episodes of AIS. Using the true episodes of AIS as the reference standard, the positive predictive value (PPV) and sensitivity of various case definition algorithms for AIS were calculated.

Results: A total of 1227 hospitalizations were successfully linked. Among the 155 hospitalizations that could not be linked, 54 were determined to be true episodes of AIS. Using ICD-10-CM code of I63* in any position of the discharge diagnoses to identify AIS yielded a PPV and sensitivity of 92.7% and 99.4%, respectively. The PPV increased to 99.8% with >12% decrease in the sensitivity when AIS was restricted to those with I63* as the primary diagnosis. When AIS was defined to be I63* as the primary, first secondary, or second secondary diagnosis, both PPV and sensitivity were greater than 97%.

Conclusion: This study demonstrated the validity of various case definition algorithms for AIS based on ICD-10-CM coding and can provide a reference for future claims-based stroke research.