Initial verification of data from a clinical database of gastroenterological surgery in Japan

Purposes: To evaluate the reliability of data collected from the gastroenterological section of the National Clinical Database of Japan (NCD), which began registrations in 2011 with ten surgical subspecialty societies. Methods: During 2014 and 2015, 1,136,700 cases involving 115 procedures at 4374 hospitals were registered in the gastroenterological surgery section of the NCD. After a test audit using the 2014 data, 17 hospitals were selected for the first audit and data verification for 2015. The data accuracy of patient demographics, surgical outcomes, and processes was assessed using 45 items from the cases registered, in comparison with the medical records. Results: In the first audit of the 2015 data, case registration accuracy verification involved 338 patients (99.4% of the extracted cases). The data accuracy with the maximum postoperative variables was > 95%. Accuracy of the mortality and status 30 days after the surgery was high (> 99%) with a sensitivity of 1.00 and a specificity of 1.00. Among the six complications studied, the recorded cases had high specificity but lower sensitivity (0.70–0.89). Conclusions: We verified the data from the gastroenterological section of the NCD and found high accuracy of data entry.