Comparing Self-reported and Physician-reported Medical History

Abstract

The authors compared self-reported medical history and medication use in a cataract case-control study of 1,380 persons (1985-1989) in Boston, Massachusetts, with information from the participants' physicians. Under- and overreporting varied by condition and type of medication. A self-reported history of hypertension had the highest sensitivity (91%), and diabetes history had the highest specificity (97%). Among different medications investigated, self-reported antihypertensive medication use was the most sensitive (88%), while self-reported use of insulin was the most specific (99%). Differences between patient- and physician-reported frequencies were very small, except for arthritis (15%) and regular aspirin use (21%). Results suggest an accurate recall of medical and drug usage history in well-defined chronic conditions.

Sleep-Disordered Breathing and Cardiovascular Disease in the Bay Area Sleep Cohort

“…33 In summary, in contrast with previous studies, the results of our study leave open the possibility that SDB may contribute to increased cardiovascular morbidity in the elderly. referenCes recent data from managed care organizations confirmed earlier reports suggesting far more accuracy in the report of cardiovascular medications when compared to sedative-hypnotics, 23 daily aspirin use, 24 or even hormone replacement therapy. 25 The fact that individuals in our population receiving such medications also had significantly higher systolic and diastolic blood pressures is not at all unusual in community-based studies 20,21 and may serve to underscore the strength of the associations that we have reported here.…”

Prevalence of cancer in the elderly: discrepancies between self-reported and registry data

“…The prevalence of cancer from self-reports British Journal of Cancer (1997) 75(3), [445][446][447] Self-reported and cancer registry data compared 447 of our elderly population (2.3%) was considerably below that determined from the registry (8.7%). Underestimates of selfreported prevalence have been reported and ranged from 13% (Paganini-Hill and Chao, 1993) to 47% (Kehoe et al, 1994), vs 74% in the present study. Indeed, only a fifth of patients with cancer in our population mentioned the occurrence of the condition (sensitivity = 20.6%), whereas this proportion ranged from 55% (Schrijvers et al, 1994) to 83% in other published studies (Paganini-Hill and Chao, 1993).…”

“…Using physicians' notes as reference may be less straight forward. For example, Kehoe et al (1994) found that almost a third of the reports could not be checked against physicians' records, as either the patients did not mention having a family physician or the physicians could not be contacted or refused to participate in the study.…”

Does number of lifetime traumas explain the relationship between PTSD and chronic medical conditions? Answers from the National Comorbidity Survey-Replication (NCS-R)

“…Assessment of chronic medical conditions relied on self-report rather than official medical records; however, research has demonstrated high concordance rates between self-reported medical conditions and medical records and agreement is especially high for stroke (Horner, Cohen, & Blazer, 2001;Okura, Urban, Mahoney, Jacobsen, & Rodeheffer, 2004;Simpson, Boyd, Carlson, Griswold, Guralnik, & Fried, 2004), heart attack (Okura et al, 2004), cancer (Simpson et al, 2004), and diabetes (Kehoe, Wu, Leske, & Chylack, 1994;Kriegsman, Penninx, van Eijk, Boeke, & Deeg, 1996;Simpson et al, 2004). Given that NCS-R respondents were limited to persons living in non-institutionalized households, it is expected that the sample represents the healthiest in terms of their chronic medical conditions, thus it is unclear how these findings would compare to research within health care settings.…”