BRHS Follow up for morbidity through General Practice (GP) records - from Baseline (1978-80) to 2024

The General Practice (GP) record review

This involved a review of BRHS participants’ GP (primary care) records to identify specified health events, initially focusing on non-fatal cardiovascular disease. The scope was later extended to include additional cardiovascular events and treatments, as well as diabetes, cancer, dementia, and frailty (table 1). The aim of the GP record review has been to identify and record the date of these events. The reviewers were either GPs or members of the GP practices. The reviews have been carried out since baseline (1978-80) at intervals of typically every one or two years. A list of events and their definitions BRHS Record Review Diagnoses details was provided to the reviewers to guide the review process. The reviewers are asked to search through the participants’ medical records, identify events that match the definition terms, and record the first date of the events’ occurrence during the review period on a form supplied for each participant BRHS Record Review form -example. The start of data collection for different event types varied as shown in table 2 below.

More details on what data were collected from GP records, how health events were defined and validated, and how the review process was conducted can be found in the methodological protocol of the GP record review below as well as in the BRHS Data User Guide.

Methodological protocol of the General Practice (GP) record review:

• BRHS Baseline (1978-80) to 2024 GP(Primary Care) Record review
• BRHS Record Review form -example.
• BRHS Record Review Diagnoses details / list of searchable definition terms
• BRHS GP record review - Validation forms (additional event confirmatory information)

Table 2: Morbidity events collected through General Practice (GP) records

Data documentation and data dictionaries

Description of the data available, data collection methods and methods for derivation of variables are found in the data documentation files for the different data sets- see table below. Data dictionaries include listing all the available variables, BRHS variable names, units/category labels, value ranges, number with data and number with missing data as well as a reference to methods sections as described in the data documentation file.

All non-fatal follow-up events collected through the BRHS GP Record Review (RR) – raw data

This dataset includes all non-fatal events identified through the General Practice (primary care) record review (RR) for each BRHS participant during the follow-up period from Baseline (1978–1980, Q1) to the 2024 GP Record Review (RR24).

• BRHS Baseline (1978-80) to 2024 GP(Primary Care) Record review Protocol

 Derived Event outcome files

These datasets include data on morbidity and mortality events (listed below) identified through the BRHS General Practice (GP) Record Review (RR) and death notifications from central registries. Events refer to those that occurred for the first time (first events) during specific follow-up periods.

Overview of Event Outcome datasets by follow-up period

• BRHS Event outcomes datasets

BRHS Event Outcome Datasets