Concordance between the Clinical Diagnosis of Influenza in Primary Care and Epidemiological Surveillance Systems (PREVIGrip Study)

Carina Aguilar Martín, Rosa Dalmau Llorca Mª, Elisabet Castro Blanco, Noèlia Carrasco-Querol, Zojaina Hernández Rojas, Emma Forcadell Drago, Dolores Rodríguez Cumplido, Alessandra Queiroga Gonçalves and José Fernández-Sáez
Additional contact information
Carina Aguilar Martín: Primary Care Intervention Evaluation Research Group (GAVINA Research Group), IDIAPJGol Terres de l’Ebre, 43500 Catalonia, Spain
Rosa Dalmau Llorca Mª: Primary Care Intervention Evaluation Research Group (GAVINA Research Group), IDIAPJGol Terres de l’Ebre, 43500 Catalonia, Spain
Elisabet Castro Blanco: Primary Care Intervention Evaluation Research Group (GAVINA Research Group), IDIAPJGol Terres de l’Ebre, 43500 Catalonia, Spain
Noèlia Carrasco-Querol: Primary Care Intervention Evaluation Research Group (GAVINA Research Group), IDIAPJGol Terres de l’Ebre, 43500 Catalonia, Spain
Zojaina Hernández Rojas: Primary Care Intervention Evaluation Research Group (GAVINA Research Group), IDIAPJGol Terres de l’Ebre, 43500 Catalonia, Spain
Emma Forcadell Drago: Primary Care Intervention Evaluation Research Group (GAVINA Research Group), IDIAPJGol Terres de l’Ebre, 43500 Catalonia, Spain
Dolores Rodríguez Cumplido: Primary Care Intervention Evaluation Research Group (GAVINA Research Group), IDIAPJGol Terres de l’Ebre, 43500 Catalonia, Spain
Alessandra Queiroga Gonçalves: Primary Care Intervention Evaluation Research Group (GAVINA Research Group), IDIAPJGol Terres de l’Ebre, 43500 Catalonia, Spain
José Fernández-Sáez: Primary Care Intervention Evaluation Research Group (GAVINA Research Group), IDIAPJGol Terres de l’Ebre, 43500 Catalonia, Spain

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 3, 1-12

Abstract: Introduction: Health authorities use different systems of influenza surveillance. Sentinel networks, which are recommended by the World Health Organization, provide information on weekly influenza incidence in a monitored population, based on laboratory-confirmed cases. In Catalonia there is a public website, DiagnostiCat, that publishes the number of weekly clinical diagnoses at the end of each week of disease registration, while the sentinel network publishes its reports later. The objective of this study was to determine whether there is concordance between the number of cases of clinical diagnoses and the number of confirmed cases of influenza, in order to evaluate the predictive potential of a clinical diagnosis-based system. Methods: Population-based ecological time series study in Catalonia. The period runs from the 2010–2011 to the 2018–2019 season. The concordance between the clinical diagnostic cases and the confirmed cases was evaluated. The degree of agreement and the concordance were analysed using Bland–Altman graphs and intraclass correlation coefficients. Results: There was greater concordance between the clinical diagnoses and the sum of the cases confirmed outside and within the sentinel network than between the diagnoses and the confirmed sentinel cases. The degree of agreement was higher when influenza rates were low. Conclusions: There is concordance between the clinical diagnosis and the confirmed cases of influenza. Registered clinical diagnostic cases could provide a good alternative to traditional surveillance, based on case confirmation. Cases of clinical diagnosis of influenza may have the potential to predict the onset of annual influenza epidemics.

Keywords: influenza; public health surveillance; epidemics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/3/1263/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/3/1263/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:3:p:1263-:d:731538

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().