For each patient included in the registry, the physician noted the age of the patient, the age at menopause, the age at which osteoporosis was diagnosed, information on densitometry, fractures, fracture risk factors and any current or planned osteoporosis treatments.
Current patient classification systems are mainly based on diagnoses information.
Diagnoses information not being available for ambulatory care, we limited the accuracy assessment of disease detection to the hospitalized population.
Strengths of our study include the prospective design, detailed information on exposure, central coding of cancer diagnoses, information on obesity and inclusion of other potential confounders.
Diabetes mellitus was defined using self-reported diagnoses, information on insulin and oral hypoglycaemic treatments and fasting blood glucose exceeding 7 mmol/L (126 mg/dL).
Data used in this study were extracted from the NDHRS, which is a single database containing production data, veterinary diagnoses, information on AI and treatments [ 1].
Other limitations of our study include the lack of formal adjudication of cancer diagnoses, information bias, and potential for bias due to missing data.
18 We used all available data from 627 practices to extract diagnoses information and aggregated it in 12 yearly bins, from 1 April 2000 to 31 March 2012.
We report the four years combined of diagnoses information since there was no change over time in the types of diagnoses for scan recipients during their inpatient stay or clinic visit.
From a methodological point of view, some points can be regarded as a disadvantage (no hierarchical diagnoses information, forced simplicity of treatment type) and others as an advantage (detailed activity/procedure information, full episodes and cost data of medical activities).
