Increases in the completeness of disease records in dairy databases following changes in the criteria determining whether a record counts as correct

Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica

Ann-Kristina Lind³  Hans Houe³  Mari N Espetvedt⁵  Cecilia Wolff²  Simo Rintakoski⁴  Peter T Thomsen¹ 

[1] Department of Animal Science, Aarhus University, Blichers Allé 20, Tjele, DK-8830, Denmark

[2] Department of Clinical Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, P.O. Box 7054, Uppsala, SE-750 07, Sweden

[3] Department of Large Animal Sciences, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Grønnegårdsvej 8, Copenhagen, Denmark

[4] Department of Veterinary Biosciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 66, Helsinki, FI-00014, Finland

[5] Department of Production Animal Clinical Science, Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, P.O. Box 8146 Dep, Oslo, NO-0033, Norway

关键词: Locomotor disorders;    Farmer disease recording;    Completeness;    Validation;    Nordic dairy disease databases;   

Others  :  789429
DOI  :  10.1186/1751-0147-54-71

 received in 2012-07-03, accepted in 2012-11-27,  发布年份 2012

【 摘 要 】

Background

The four Nordic countries: Denmark (DK), Finland (FIN), Norway (NO) and Sweden (SE), all have national databases in which mainly records of treated animals are maintained. Recently, the completeness of locomotor disorder records in these databases has been evaluated using farmers’ recordings as a reference level. The objective of the present study was to see how previous estimates of completeness figures are affected by the criteria determining whether a recording in the database is to be judged correct. These demands included date of diagnosis and disease classification. In contrast with the previous study, a period of time between the date of disease recording in the database and by the farmer was allowed. Further, the calculations were brought to bear on individual locomotor diagnoses instead of a common locomotor disease complex code.

Methods

Randomly selected dairy herds (≥ 15 cows) were invited to participate. During two 2-month periods in 2008 the farmers recorded the diseases they observed on the farm and their recordings constituted a farmer database (FD). These recordings were compared to disease recordings in the National Databases (ND). Earlier calculations of completeness for locomotor complex cases assuming an exact match on date were compared with ±7 day and ±30 day discrepancies calculated in this study.

Results

The farmers in DK, FIN, NO and SE recorded 426, 147, 97 and 193 locomotor disorders, respectively. When a window of ±7 days was allowed there was a relative increase in completeness figures lying in the range of 24–100%. Further increases were minor, or non-existent, when the window was expanded to ±30 days. The same trend was seen for individual diagnoses.

Conclusion

In all four of the Nordic countries a common pattern can be observed: a further increase in completeness occurs when individual locomotor diagnoses recorded by the farmer are permitted to match any locomotor diagnosis recorded in the ND. Completeness increased when both time span and different diagnoses within the locomotor complex were allowed.

【 授权许可】

   
2012 Lind et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

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