ArticleBMC medical research methodology2024
Multimorbidity prevalence and health outcome prediction: assessing the impact of lookback periods, disease count, and definition criteria in health administrative data at the population-based level.
Article in BMC medical research methodology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Polypharmacy Thresholds that Best Predict Emergency Room Visits and Mortality in Older Adults: A Population-Based Study in Québec, Canada.Journal of applied gerontology : the official journal of the Southern Gerontological Society · 2026Article
- Association of Physical Activity Levels with Severe Multimorbidity Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults: Evidence from CHARLS and a Community Sample.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Assessing disability-adjusted life years (DALY) from multiple medication use and multiple illnesses of older adults in rural Thailand.Aging clinical and experimental research · 2026Article
- Article
- Using electronic health records to understand multimorbidity in older people: a scoping review.European geriatric medicine · 2025Article
- Incidence and Prevalence of Alzheimer's Disease in Medicare Beneficiaries.Neurology and therapy · 2025Article
- Discriminative Ability of the Charlson Comorbidity Index for Long-Term Mortality in a General Population: Nationwide, Population-Based Study of 10 Million Adults in Sweden.Clinical epidemiology · 2025Article
- Article
- 10-Year Multimorbidity Trajectories in Older People Have Limited Benefit in Predicting Short-Term Health Outcomes in Comparison to Standard Multimorbidity Thresholds: A Population-Based Study.Clinical epidemiology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundHealth administrative databases play a crucial role in population-level multimorbidity surveillance. Determining the appropriate retrospective or lookback period (LP) for observing prevalent and newly diagnosed diseases in administrative data presents challenge in estimating multimorbidity prevalence and predicting health outcome. The aim of this population-based study was to assess the impact of LP on multimorbidity prevalence and health outcomes prediction across three multimorbidity definitions, three lists of diseases used for multimorbidity assessment, and six health outcomes.
methodsWe conducted a population-based study including all individuals ages > 65 years on April 1st, 2019, in Québec, Canada. We considered three lists of diseases labeled according to the number of chronic conditions it considered: (1) L60 included 60 chronic conditions from the International Classification of Diseases (ICD); (2) L20 included a core of 20 chronic conditions; and (3) L31 included 31 chronic conditions from the Charlson and Elixhauser indices. For each list, we: (1) measured multimorbidity prevalence for three multimorbidity definitions (at least two [MM2+], three [MM3+] or four (MM4+) chronic conditions); and (2) evaluated capacity (c-statistic) to predict 1-year outcomes (mortality, hospitalisation, polypharmacy, and general practitioner, specialist, or emergency department visits) using LPs ranging from 1 to 20 years.
resultsIncrease in multimorbidity prevalence decelerated after 5-10 years (e.g., MM2+, L31: LP = 1y: 14%, LP = 10y: 58%, LP = 20y: 69%). Within the 5-10 years LP range, predictive performance was better for L20 than L60 (e.g., LP = 7y, mortality, MM3+: L20 [0.798;95%CI:0.797-0.800] vs. L60 [0.779; 95%CI:0.777-0.781]) and typically better for MM3 + and MM4 + definitions (e.g., LP = 7y, mortality, L60: MM4+ [0.788;95%CI:0.786-0.790] vs. MM2+ [0.768;95%CI:0.766-0.770]).
conclusionsIn our databases, ten years of data was required for stable estimation of multimorbidity prevalence. Within that range, the L20 and multimorbidity definitions MM3 + or MM4 + reached maximal predictive performance.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.