Venous thromboembolism in Spain. Comparison between an administrative database and the RIETE registry.

Background: The aim of this study was to validate the baseline characteristics of the RIETE cohort against the much larger national Spanish population-based database.

Methods: The RIETE is an ongoing registry of consecutive patients with symptomatic, objectively confirmed, acute venous thromboembolism (VTE). We compared some baseline characteristics and death rates in the administrative database from the Spanish Ministry of Health (CMBD, Conjunto Mínimo Básico de Datos) with those in the RIETE registry.

Results: During the study period, data on 87,733 patients with VTE were collected from the CMBD and 8053 from the RIETE. There were no differences between the groups in gender, mean age, clinical presentation of the VTE event, or the presence of recent surgery; however, chronic lung disease, chronic heart failure, and pregnancy were slightly more common in patients in the CMBD. There were no differences in mortality rate in patients with deep vein thrombosis, but the 12% death rate in patients with pulmonary embolism in the CMBD was three times higher than the 4.1% found in the RIETE. However, when only considering patients with pulmonary embolism who had objective tests, the 4.8% death rate in the CMBD no longer differed from the mortality in the RIETE.

Conclusions: Our data reveal that the information in the RIETE is very close to that observed in the CMBD, thus supporting the validity of the data in the RIETE.