Establishing Syndromic Surveillance of Acute Coronary Syndrome, Myocardial Infarction, and Stroke: Registry Study Based on Routine Data From German Emergency Departments
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Emergency department (ED) routine data offer a unique opportunity for syndromic surveillance of communicable and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). In 2020, the Robert Koch Institute established a syndromic surveillance system using ED data from the AKTIN registry. The system provides daily insights into ED utilization for infectious diseases. Adding NCD indicators to the surveillance is of great public health importance, especially during acute events, where timely monitoring enables targeted public health responses and communication. Objective: This study aimed to develop and validate syndrome definitions for the NCD indicators of acute coronary syndrome (ACS), myocardial infarction (MI), and stroke (STR). Methods: First, syndrome definitions were developed with clinical experts combining ED diagnosis, chief complaints, diagnostic certainty, and discharge information. Then, using the multicenter retrospective routine ED data provided by the AKTIN registry, we conducted internal validation by linking ED cases fulfilling the syndrome definition with the hospital discharge diagnoses and calculating sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy. Lastly, external validation comprised the comparison of the ED cases fulfilling the syndrome definition with the federal German hospital diagnosis statistic. Ratios comparing the relative number of cases for all syndrome definitions were calculated and stratified by age and sex. Results: We analyzed data from 9 EDs, totaling 704,797 attendances from January 1, 2019, to March 5, 2021. Syndrome definitions were based on ICD-10 (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision-German Modification) diagnoses, chief complaints, and discharge information. We identified 4.3% of all cases as ACS, 0.6% as MI, and 3.2% as STR. Patients with ACS and MI were more likely to be male (58.3% and 64.7%), compared to the overall attendances (52.7%). For all syndrome definitions, the prevalence was higher in the older age groups (60-79 years and >80 years), and the highest proportions of cases were assigned an urgency level (3=urgent or 2=very urgent). The internal validation showed accuracy and specificity levels above 96% for all syndrome definitions. The sensitivity was 85.3% for ACS, 56.6% for MI, and 80.5% for STR. The external validation showed high levels of correspondence between the ED data and the German hospital statistics, with most ratios ranging around 1, indicating congruence, particularly in older age groups. The highest differences were noted in younger age groups, with the highest ratios in women aged between 20 and 39 years (4.57 for MI and 4.17 for ACS). Conclusions: We developed NCD indicators for ACS, MI, and STR that showed high levels of internal and external validity. The integration of these indicators into the syndromic surveillance system for EDs could enable daily monitoring of NCD patterns and trends to enhance timely public health surveillance in Germany.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".