Clostridium difficile infection rate data is often biased because of inaccurate reporting, according to research in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.
C. diff data collection is plagued by the exclusion of parameters that would make data collection more accurate, according to the study. When researchers "corrected" a year of data for hospital-onset C. diff from 124 hospitals, accounting for inaccurate case reporting, knowledge of laboratory results from outside hospitals, patient days adjusted according to reporting periods and patient age, state rates of hospital-onset C. diff decreased by 45 percent.
"Correction" of the data also uncovered a 6 to 8 percent rate of case misclassification among all C. diff diagnoses.
The study concluded being more precise with data collection could be instrumental in revealing true rates of C. diff.
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