New publication in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: validating CABG conduit counts
At a glance
A validation of the conduit counts recorded in Medicare claims for coronary artery bypass grafting, benchmarked against operative notes and the STS National Database.
Administrative claims are widely used to study coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) at scale, but their accuracy for capturing the number of bypass conduits used has been uncertain. This study validated the conduit counts recorded in Medicare claims against two reference standards — operative notes and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) National Database — to assess how reliably claims data can support research on grafting strategy and outcomes.
Alessandro Gasparini, then at Red Door Analytics, provided the statistical methodology and analysis. The work was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.