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from the some-correlation-is-still-better-than-none dept.
GungnirSniper writes:
"In the US State of Washington, the rare birth defect anencephaly has become slightly more common, worrying would-be parents and baffling epidemiologists. TechTimes.com reports that the health records of a single three-county area in Washington State 'revealed 23 cases of anencephaly in 36 months, between January 2010 and 2013. This translates to a rate of 8.4 births out of every 10,000. That is four times the normal occurrence for the rare disorder.'
A group of epidemiologists working for the state's Department of Health reported finding no clear cause for the exceptional prevalence of this fatal birth defect. But they are now accused of not looking hard enough for the cause. Dr. Beate Ritz, who has done several studies on birth defects, told CNN that the data quality on medical records, which were the primary source of data used in the study, 'is so low that it's not really research'.
Washington's Department of Health has admitted that 'Medical record reviews might not have captured all information, preventing a cause from being identified,' and says its officials will continue monitoring births, and look for possible causes.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mmcmonster on Monday March 03 2014, @01:23PM
I am a physician.
Most medical records from an outpatient office are useless. More so if they are paper charts/not electronic medical records (EMR). But even most outpatient records in an EMR system are useless. They make sure all the data required for adequate billing are correct, but things aren't updated regularly.
For instance: The EMR on the last patient I saw said that he had heart surgery 3 years ago. I asked him what he had. He said that he had a cardiac stent in 2008. No one had updated the '3 years ago' line since then until I saw him for the first time today!. A big part of my documentation is to sanitize everyone else's documentation so it makes sense in the future. I use absolute dates and get rid of the '3 years ago' and things like that.
And God help the researchers if the medical record was a paper chart. They'll just have the vital signs, and quick exam, and a few scribbles about what the physician thought was important that day.
Proper research on something like this has to involve the researcher (or maybe even the CDC) going personally and interviewing every parent and seeing if they can get a causal relationship based on things that would never make it into a medical record.