[Estimating prevalence of diabetes mellitus in a Lazio province, Italy, by capture-recapture models].

Objective: to estimate the prevalence of diabetes in a Lazio province, Italy, using a record linkage offour patient lists and applying capture-recapture techniques.

Design And Setting: we selected records of individuals living in Viterbo province (Lazio region, Italy) from four lists obtained from three different health administrative registries in 2004: the hospital discharge registry of Lazio region (ICD9-CM code 250, 2488 subjects); the registry of outpatient care prescriptions (subjects exempted from medical charge for health care related to diabetes, 3582 subjects); subjects with prescriptions of glicate haemoglobin (7169 subjects); the registry of exemptions, from medical charge for health care of the local health unit of Viterbo province, related to diabetes (8529 subjects). A deterministic record linkage using 5 different keys of linkage obtained from demographic information, was applied The estimates were derived using two capture-recapture techniques: log-linear models and sample-coverage approach.