Coding of infections was based on clinical definitions.
Patients with PSS were defined by (1) International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision (ICD-9) codes reflecting severe sepsis and septic shock and (2) ICD-9 codes of infection and organ dysfunction as defined by updated Angus criteria.
Age, sex, type of hospital admission, coded foci of infection and comorbidities based on categories of the Charlson and Elixhauser comorbidity indices, coding of sepsis as main diagnosis and year of treatment were assessed as possible risk factors.
Inpatient SSI indicators are based upon diagnosis or procedure codes suggestive of infection during either the index admission or a hospital re-admission.
Outpatient SSI indicators are based upon diagnosis or procedure codes suggestive of infection during either an emergency department visit or an outpatient provider visit.
This "other" category consisted almost entirely of patients with ICD-9-CM codes for infection of the leg but not specifically of the foot.
This is not surprising because Martin and coworkers, like Flatten, looked only at a small subset of codes for infection to define sepsis.
For example, to attain significant knockdown of target gene expression using adenoviral vectors encoding shRNAs corresponding to the c-myc coding region, multiplicities of infection (MOI) up to 3000 were used [ 10, 11].
Several coders failed notably in following the three testable instructions in Codac: 1) rule 7, to code infectious causes in Infection (coding by the site of infection instead), 2) rule 8, to code terminations for congenital malformations in Termination (coded as Congenital anomaly instead), and 3) rule 2, to code unexplained intrapartum deaths in Intrapartum (coded as Unknown instead).
UrgIndex then filters the codes of suspected infection concepts, specifically identifying patients who pose an epidemic risk.
