Respiratory failure & ventilation
The Consistency of Hypercapnic Respiratory Failure Case Definitions in Electronic Health Record Data
Authors' conclusion
Case definitions from studies of hypercapnic respiratory failure identify patients with widely different attributes and outcomes, thereby hampering interpretation of associated study findings.
Study context
- Population
- Adult emergency department (ED) and inpatient encounters in 2022, TriNetX data set enriched for hypercapnic respiratory failure
- Participants
- 515,286 encounters
- Exposure
- Ten published case definitions for hypercapnic respiratory failure applied to the same data set
- Outcome
- Agreement among case definitions for hypercapnic respiratory failure identification (Cohen's κ)
Methodological detailselectronic health record data, emulation data set, multicentre (76 US hospitals)
- Electronic health record data
- Emulation data set
- Multicentre (76 US hospitals)
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Agreement among case definitions (Cohen's κ)
Limited agreement among case definitions, median κ (IQR 0.21-0.56)
0.35
Observational data: associations, not effects.
Further findings
| Outcome | Values |
|---|---|
| Diagnosis codes for first-day arterial blood gas-demonstrated hypercapniaInsensitive | Diagnosis codes sensitivity 23.5% · 95% CI 23.1%-23.8% |
Receiving ventilatory support across cohorts
- Varied substantially among cohorts (range)
- 29%-100%
60-day mortality across cohorts
- Varied substantially among cohorts (range)
- 12%-28%
Original publication
The Consistency of Hypercapnic Respiratory Failure Case Definitions in Electronic Health Record Data. Chest. Published 28 August 2025. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →