Summary

Monitoring the incidence of stroke and acute coronary syndrome (ACS) is important for assessing the health burden of these conditions. There is no direct way to count the number of new stroke or ACS events at the national level. Instead, estimates are derived using proxy measures, based on unlinked, routinely available hospitalisation data from the AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database and deaths data from the AIHW National Mortality Database. Because the proxy measures cannot differentiate events for the same person within and between data sets, algorithms were developed to account for the multiple hospitalisations for a single stroke or ACS event, and potential duplicate events across the hospitalisation and deaths data sets. However, the algorithms cannot differentiate between recurrent and new events.

This report aims to fill that gap. For the first time, linked data from the National Integrated Health Services Information Analysis Asset (NIHSI AA) is used to estimate the incidence of stroke and ACS events. It looks at the incidence of new events by age, sex, selected population characteristics, and state and territory, in 2018. It includes data on total (recurrent and new) stroke and ACS events from 2011 to 2018 to examine trends over time.

A validation study was also undertaken to assess how well the algorithms based on unlinked hospitalisation and deaths data function using linked data from the NIHSI AA. The key findings from the validation study undertaken to assess the algorithms and the methods for estimating the incidence of stroke and ACS using linked data from the NIHSI AA are summarised in a separate technical report.

Technical report >

Next page