Elsevier

Annals of Epidemiology

Volume 5, Issue 4, July 1995, Pages 278-285
Annals of Epidemiology

Original report
Surveillance and ascertainment of cardiovascular events: The Cardiovascular Health Study

https://doi.org/10.1016/1047-2797(94)00093-9Get rights and content
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Abstract

While previous prospective multicenter studies have conducted cardiovascular disease surveillance, few have detailed the techniques relating to the ascertainment of and data collection for events. The Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS) is a population-based study of coronary heart disease and stroke in older adults. This article summarizes the CHS events protocol and describes the methods of surveillance and ascertainment of hospitalized and nonhospitalized events, the use of medical records and other support documents, organizational issues at the field center level, and the classification of events through an adjudication process. We present data on incidence and mortality, the classification of adjudicated events, and the agreement between classification by the Events Subcommittee and the medical records diagnostic codes. The CHS techniques are a successful model for complete ascertainment, investigation, and documentation of events in an older cohort.

Keywords

Ascertainment
cardiovascular events
surveillance
follow-up methods
misclassification

Cited by (0)

This work was supported by contracts NO1-HC-85079 through NO1-HC-85086 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.