Assignment of ethnicity in patients with acute ischemic stroke in northern Israel英文文献资料.docVIP

Vol.3, No.7, 444-446 (2011) Health doi:10.4236/health.2011.37073 Assignment of ethnicity in patients with acute ischemic stroke in northern israel Gregory Telman1*, Efim Kouperberg2, Moshe Herskovitz2, Tarek Diab2, Hilel Hurani2, Elliot Sprecher2 1 2 Department of Neurology, Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, Israel; Correspongding Author: g_telman@.il * Department of Neurology, Technion Faculty of Medicine, Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa, Israel. Received 23 January 2010; revised 1 February 2010; accepted 11 March 2010. ABSTRACT using place of birth and residence in addition to given and family names. The results of this study are highly important for planning of future studies devoted to the influence of ethnicity on different aspects of cerebro- vascular diseases in our region. The description of various methods for ethnicity classification can be found in the literature, though their reliability still remains unclear. We examined inter-observer agreement in defining the ethnic identification of patients in a bi-ethnic population (Arab-Jewish) in northern Israel, using place of birth and residence in addition to given and family names. Data about 1006 con- secutive patients with acute ischemic stroke were gathered from our stroke registry. The data were analyzed by four independent observers (authors MH, TD, HH, GT) aiming to assign pa- tients either as Arabs or Jews. Agreement be- tween all four observers was excellent, as as- sessed by Fleiss’ Kappa statistic (κ = 0.96). We conclude that the use of given and family names of patients, together with their place of birth and residence, achieved near-perfect inter-observer agreement and a highly reliable assignment of ethnicity in two large ethnic population groups – Arabs and Jews – in northern Israel. 2. MATERIALS AND METHODS Data were gathered from our stroke registry on 1006 consecutive patients with acute stroke who had been ho