Publications by authors named "Frank Defalco"

Study Question: Do recent changes in European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) clinical guidelines result in more comprehensive diagnosis of women with endometriosis?

Summary Answer: The latest shift in clinical guidelines results in diagnosis of more women with endometriosis but current ESHRE diagnostic criteria do not capture a sizable percentage of women with the disease.

What Is Known Already: Historically, laparoscopy was the gold standard for diagnosing endometriosis, a complex gynecological condition marked by a heterogeneous set of symptoms that vary widely among women. More recently, changes in clinical guidelines have shifted to incorporate imaging-based approaches such as transvaginal sonography and magnetic resonance imaging.

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The Health-Analytics Data to Evidence Suite (HADES) is an open-source software collection developed by Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI). It executes directly against healthcare data such as electronic health records and administrative claims, that have been converted to the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model. Using advanced analytics, HADES performs characterization, population-level causal effect estimation, and patient-level prediction, potentially across a federated data network, allowing patient-level data to remain locally while only aggregated statistics are shared.

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Background: Seasonality classification is a well-known and important part of time series analysis. Understanding the seasonality of a biological event can contribute to an improved understanding of its causes and help guide appropriate responses. Observational data, however, are not comprised of biological events, but timestamped diagnosis codes the combination of which (along with additional requirements) are used as proxies for biological events.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT) is a serious but rare side effect linked to COVID-19 vaccines, prompting researchers to study pre-pandemic cases of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia (TWT) using global health data sources.
  • - The study analyzed electronic health records from 2017 to 2019 to determine background rates of TWT, which were found to vary significantly across different demographics and definitions, with incidence rates ranging from 1.62 to 150.65 per 100,000 person-years.
  • - Results indicated that TWT patients tend to be older men with various health issues, and the research suggests challenges in identifying VITT due to inconsistent baseline characteristics compared to
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  • The study emphasizes the importance of real world data (RWD) for understanding and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic using a standardized approach through the CHARYBDIS framework.
  • Researchers conducted a retrospective database study across multiple countries, including the US and parts of Europe and Asia, involving over 4.5 million individuals and focusing on their clinical characteristics and outcomes.
  • Findings reveal higher diagnoses among women but more hospitalizations among men, common comorbidities like diabetes and heart disease, and key symptoms such as cough and fever; this data helps to identify trends in COVID-19 across different populations and time periods.
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  • Advances in standardization of healthcare data enhance collaboration and generate real-world evidence, but ensuring data quality is crucial for confidence in these findings.
  • The study outlines a data quality framework that includes various checks to evaluate conformance, completeness, and plausibility of data while allowing for customized reporting across different health data sources.
  • The Data Quality Dashboard, an open-source tool, identifies potential data quality issues and improves transparency in observational research, ultimately leading to better evidence generation.
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  • The study analyzed the demographics, cancer types, comorbidities, and outcomes of patients with a history of cancer who contracted COVID-19, comparing them to those hospitalized with influenza.
  • A total of 366,050 diagnosed patients and 119,597 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 were included, with prostate and breast cancers being the most common among the diagnosed cohort, and many patients over 65 years old having multiple health issues.
  • The findings revealed a significant occurrence of COVID-19-related deaths among cancer patients, with a range of 2% to 26% depending on hospitalization status, highlighting the need for tailored clinical care for this high-risk group.
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Multi-center observational studies require recognition and reconciliation of differences in patient representations arising from underlying populations, disparate coding practices and specifics of data capture. This leads to different granularity or detail of concepts representing the clinical facts. For researchers studying certain populations of interest, it is important to ensure that concepts at the right level are used for the definition of these populations.

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The true risk of a COVID-19 resurgence as states reopen businesses is unknown. In this paper, we used anonymized cell-phone data to quantify the potential risk of COVID-19 transmission in business establishments by building a Business Risk Index that measures transmission risk over time. The index was built using two metrics, visits per square foot and the average duration of visits, to account for both density of visits and length of time visitors linger in the business.

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Article Synopsis
  • Routinely collected real-world data (RWD) is essential for understanding and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, as demonstrated by the CHARYBDIS framework for standardizing and analyzing this data.
  • A descriptive cohort study involving over 4.5 million individuals was conducted across the U.S., Europe, and Asia to examine COVID-19-related health risks and outcomes, with detailed information available on an interactive website.
  • The findings from the CHARYBDIS study serve as benchmarks to enhance our knowledge of COVID-19's progression and management, facilitating timely evaluations of new preventative and therapeutic strategies.
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Article Synopsis
  • - Early identification of COVID-19 symptoms and related health conditions is crucial for managing the pandemic and improving healthcare responses, as shown by analysis of over 3 million tested individuals across various countries.
  • - The majority of COVID-positive participants were women aged 18-65, with symptoms like fever, cough, and difficulty breathing being the most common; hospitalization rates varied from 4% to 38%, with mortality rates ranging from 1% to 10.5% within a month of testing positive.
  • - Significant geographic and temporal differences in testing ratios and healthcare outcomes highlight the need for comprehensive international data analysis to better inform public health strategies and resource allocation, especially as countries prepare for potential future waves of the virus.
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Article Synopsis
  • * A study analyzed 34,128 COVID-19 patients across the US, South Korea, and Spain, revealing differences in gender and age demographics among countries.
  • * Compared to influenza patients hospitalized from 2014-2019, COVID-19 patients tend to be younger, more often male, and have fewer comorbidities and lower medication use, indicating a need for tailored response strategies.
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Background In this study we phenotyped individuals hospitalised with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in depth, summarising entire medical histories, including medications, as captured in routinely collected data drawn from databases across three continents. We then compared individuals hospitalised with COVID-19 to those previously hospitalised with influenza. Methods We report demographics, previously recorded conditions and medication use of patients hospitalised with COVID-19 in the US (Columbia University Irving Medical Center [CUIMC], Premier Healthcare Database [PHD], UCHealth System Health Data Compass Database [UC HDC], and the Department of Veterans Affairs [VA OMOP]), in South Korea (Health Insurance Review & Assessment [HIRA]), and Spain (The Information System for Research in Primary Care [SIDIAP] and HM Hospitales [HM]).

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Observational evidence suggests that patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) are at increased risk for acute pancreatitis (AP) versus those without T2DM. A small number of AP events were reported in clinical trials of the sodium glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitor canagliflozin, though no imbalances were observed between treatment groups. This observational study evaluated risk of AP among new users of canagliflozin compared with new users of six classes of other antihyperglycemic agents (AHAs).

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Background: Understanding how patients are treated in the real-world is vital to identifying potential gaps in care. We describe the current pharmacologic treatment patterns for the treatment of depression.

Methods: Patients with depression were identified from four large national claims databases during 1/1/2014-1/31/2019.

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Purpose: To compare the incidence of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) who were new users of sodium glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) versus other classes of antihyperglycemic agents (AHAs).

Methods: Patients were identified from four large US claims databases using broad (all T2DM patients) and narrow (intended to exclude patients with type 1 diabetes or secondary diabetes misclassified as T2DM) definitions of T2DM. New users of SGLT2i and seven groups of comparator AHAs were matched (1:1) on exposure propensity scores to adjust for imbalances in baseline covariates.

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Aims: Sodium glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) are indicated for treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM); some SGLT2i have reported cardiovascular benefit, and some have reported risk of below-knee lower extremity (BKLE) amputation. This study examined the real-world comparative effectiveness within the SGLT2i class and compared with non-SGLT2i antihyperglycaemic agents.

Materials And Methods: Data from 4 large US administrative claims databases were used to characterize risk and provide population-level estimates of canagliflozin's effects on hospitalization for heart failure (HHF) and BKLE amputation vs other SGLT2i and non-SGLT2i in T2DM patients.

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Aims: To examine the incidence of amputation in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) treated with sodium glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors overall, and canagliflozin specifically, compared with non-SGLT2 inhibitor antihyperglycaemic agents (AHAs).

Materials And Methods: Patients with T2DM newly exposed to SGLT2 inhibitors or non-SGLT2 inhibitor AHAs were identified using the Truven MarketScan database. The incidence of below-knee lower extremity (BKLE) amputation was calculated for patients treated with SGLT2 inhibitors, canagliflozin, or non-SGLT2 inhibitor AHAs.

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Aims: To estimate and compare incidence of diabetes ketoacidosis (DKA) among patients with type 2 diabetes who are newly treated with SGLT2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) versus non-SGLT2i antihyperglycemic agents (AHAs) in actual clinical practice.

Methods: A new-user cohort study design using a large insurance claims database in the US. DKA incidence was compared between new users of SGLT2i and new users of non-SGLT2i AHAs pair-matched on exposure propensity scores (EPS) using Cox regression models.

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Background: Stroke mainly occurs in patients without atrial fibrillation (AF). This study explored risk prediction models for ischemic stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA) in patients without AF.

Methods: Three US-based healthcare databases (Truven MarketScan Commercial Claims and Encounters [CCAE], Medicare Supplemental [MDCR], and Optum Clinformatics [Optum]) were used to establish patient cohorts without AF during the index period of 2008-2012.

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Introduction: Data quality and fitness for analysis are crucial if outputs of analyses of electronic health record data or administrative claims data should be trusted by the public and the research community.

Methods: We describe a data quality analysis tool (called Achilles Heel) developed by the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics Collaborative (OHDSI) and compare outputs from this tool as it was applied to 24 large healthcare datasets across seven different organizations.

Results: We highlight 12 data quality rules that identified issues in at least 10 of the 24 datasets and provide a full set of 71 rules identified in at least one dataset.

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Observational research promises to complement experimental research by providing large, diverse populations that would be infeasible for an experiment. Observational research can test its own clinical hypotheses, and observational studies also can contribute to the design of experiments and inform the generalizability of experimental research. Understanding the diversity of populations and the variance in care is one component.

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Objectives: To evaluate the utility of applying the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM) across multiple observational databases within an organization and to apply standardized analytics tools for conducting observational research.

Materials And Methods: Six deidentified patient-level datasets were transformed to the OMOP CDM. We evaluated the extent of information loss that occurred through the standardization process.

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Observational healthcare databases represent a valuable resource for health economics, outcomes research, quality of care, drug safety, epidemiology and comparative effectiveness research. The methods used to identify a population for study in an observational healthcare database with the desired drug exposures of interest are complex and not consistent nor apparent in the published literature. Our research evaluates three drug classification systems and their impact on prevalence in the analysis of observational healthcare databases using opioids as a case in point.

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