Impact of case-mix adjustment on observed variation in the healing of diabetic foot ulcers at 12 weeks using data from the National Diabetes Foot Care Audit of England and Wales: A cohort study.

AIM: This cohort study investigates the extent to which variation in ulcer healing between services can be explained by demographic and clinical characteristics. METHODS: The National Diabetes Foot Care Audit collated data on people with diabetic foot ulcers presenting to specialist services in England and Wales between July 2014 and March 2018. Logistic regression models were created to describe associations between risk factors and a person being alive and ulcer-free 12 weeks from presentation, and to investigate whether variation between 120 participating services persisted after risk factor adjustment. RESULTS: Of 27,030 people with valid outcome data, 12,925 (47.8%) were alive and ulcer-free at 12 weeks, 13,745 (50.9%) had an unhealed ulcer and 360 had died (1.3%). Factors associated with worse outcome were male sex, more severe ulcers, history of cardiac or renal disease and a longer time between first presentation to a non-specialist healthcare professional and first expert assessment. After adjustment for these factors, four services (3.3%) were more than 3SD above and seven services (5.8%) were more than 3SD below the national mean for proportions that were alive and ulcer-free at follow-up. CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATIONS: Variation in the healing of diabetic foot ulcers between specialist services in England and Wales persisted after adjusting for demographic characteristics, ulcer severity, smoking, body mass index and co-morbidities. We conclude that other factors contribute to variation in healing of diabetic foot ulcers and include the time to specialist assessment.

Coding of Barrett's oesophagus with high-grade dysplasia in national administrative databases: a population-based cohort study.

OBJECTIVES: The International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision (ICD-10) system used in the English hospital administrative database (Hospital Episode Statistics (HES)) does not contain a specific code for oesophageal high-grade dysplasia (HGD). The aim of this paper was to examine how patients with HGD were coded in HES and whether it was done consistently. SETTING: National population-based cohort study of patients with newly diagnosed with HGD in England. The study used data collected prospectively as part of the National Oesophago-Gastric Cancer Audit (NOGCA). These records were linked to HES to investigate the pattern of ICD-10 codes recorded for these patients at the time of diagnosis. PARTICIPANTS: All patients with a new diagnosis of HGD between 1 April 2013 and 31 March 2014 in England, who had data submitted to the NOGCA. OUTCOMES MEASURED: The main outcome assessed was the pattern of primary and secondary ICD-10 diagnostic codes recorded in the HES records at endoscopy at the time of diagnosis of HGD. RESULTS: Among 452 patients with a new diagnosis of HGD between 1 April 2013 and 31 March 2014, Barrett's oesophagus was the only condition coded in 200 (44.2%) HES records. Records for 59 patients (13.1%) contained no oesophageal conditions. The remaining 193 patients had various diagnostic codes recorded, 93 included a diagnosis of Barrett's oesophagus and 57 included a diagnosis of oesophageal/gastric cardia cancer. CONCLUSIONS: HES is not suitable to support national studies looking at the management of HGD. This is one reason for the UK to adopt an extended ICD system (akin to ICD-10-CM).