Validity of diagnostic codes to identify hospitalizations for infections among patients treated with oral anti-diabetic drugs.

Purpose: Identification of hospitalizations for infection is important for post-marketing surveillance of drugs, but the validity of using diagnosis codes to identify these events is unknown. Differentiating between hospitalization for and with infection is important, as the latter is common and less likely to arise from pre-admission exposure to drugs. We determined positive predictive values (PPVs) of diagnostic coding-based algorithms to identify hospitalization for infection among patients prescribed oral anti-diabetic drugs (OADs).