Evaluation of administrative case definitions for hypertension in Canadian children

Hypertension is increasing in children and warrants disease surveillance. We therefore sought to evaluate the validity of case definitions to identify pediatric hypertension in administrative healthcare data. Cases of hypertension in children 3–18 years of age were identified utilizing blood pressures recorded in the Manitoba Primary Care Research Network (MaPCReN) electronic medical record from 2014 to 2016. Prevalence of hypertension and associated clinical characteristics were determined. We then evaluated the validity of 18 case definitions combining outpatient physician visits (ICD9CM codes), hospital claims (ICD9CM/ICD10 codes) and antihypertensive use within 1–3 years of data housed at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy. The MaPCReN database identified 241 children with hypertension and 4090 without (prevalence = 5.6%). The sensitivity of algorithms ranged between 0.18 and 0.51 and the specificity between 0.98 and 1.00. Pharmaceutical use increased the sensitivity of algorithms significantly. The algorithms with the highest sensitivity and area under the ROC curve were 1 or more hospitalization OR 1 or more physician claim OR 1 or more pharmaceutical record. Evaluating 2 years of data is recommended. Administrative data alone reflects diagnosis of hypertension with high specificity, but underestimate the true prevalence of this disease. Alternative data sources are therefore required for disease surveillance.