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Approach to defining an ischemic stroke cohort

We are trying to define a cohort of patients with ischemic stroke in a data source that includes EHR structured data with ICD10CM source codes as well as concepts extracted from physician narratives. To do this, the concept set expression includes concept id 443454 (cerebral infarction), since it is important to capture the ICD10CM I63* codes that map to 443454 (cerebral infarction). However, I am concerned that by including 443454 (cerebral infarction) in the concept set expression, that we could potentially include patients with a cerebral infarction that was hemorrhagic (rather than ischemic) when extracting concepts from the physician narratives.

Initially I was thinking that maybe what was needed was to get more specific mappings for some of these I63* codes. For example, I63.81 (other cerebral infarction due to occlusion or stenosis of small artery) maps to 443454 (cerebral infarction) and 321887 (disorder of artery) which are not very specific.

But often it looks like there may not be an equivalent or more specific mapping that would be completely correct. Therefore, are there ever situations where it is acceptable to make mapping exceptions (for example, mapping some of these I63* codes to a concept like ā€˜ischemic strokeā€™) to solve for this, perhaps in a way that is similar to adding custom concept_ids? Or is there a recommended approach for how to go about solving for this?

Thank you for your question @rkalfus . Youā€™re right to be cautious about including concept ID 443454 (Cerebral infarction), as it could potentially capture patients with hemorrhagic strokes. Similarly, using less-specific codes like 321887 (Disorder of artery) may not provide sufficient granularity to differentiate between ischemic and hemorrhagic events.

A better option might be to map to both 443454 (Cerebral infarction) and 4310996 (Ischemic stroke). This way, you ensure that the I63 codes (which correspond to cerebral infarction) are first mapped to ā€˜Cerebral infarctionā€™, and then you can refine the concept set to focus on ā€˜Ischemic strokeā€™. This allows you to capture both specific and broader ischemic stroke-related events while strategically excluding hemorrhagic strokes.

This approach provides flexibility by including ischemic events and maintaining specificity to ensure that only ischemic causes are captured without the risk of including hemorrhagic infarctions.

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Linking the issues ICD10 granularity issue requiring new more specific concepts Ā· Issue #1015 Ā· OHDSI/Vocabulary-v5.0 Ā· GitHub

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Thank you @janice for your help and @Alexdavv for linking to that issue!

So then is the appropriate next step for me to add a community contribution (Type 3) per the process in

to add mappings for ICD10CM I63 codes to map to ā€˜ischemic strokeā€™ when necessary for mappings that would not be factually incorrect?

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