BACKGROUND Studies examining incident heart failure (HF) have been limited to select populations. To examine incident HF with broader generalizability, there is need to assemble a HF-free cohort using a geographically-diverse sample. We aimed to develop and validate a simple medication-based strategy for assembling a HF-free cohort from the REasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study. METHODS We examined REGARDS participants with ≥6 months of Medicare inpatient and outpatient claims data at the time of the baseline in-home study examination. To assemble a HF-free cohort, we identified and excluded participants taking HF-specific medications. To validate this approach, we evaluated event rates among this cohort and assessed diagnostic performance using Medicare claims-based definitions of HF as the referent standard. RESULTS Among 28,884 eligible participants, 3125 were excluded from the proposed HF-free cohort, leaving a total of 25,759 (89%) participants. Depending on the Medicare definition used as the referent, the negative predictive value of this approach ranged from 95.0-99.2%. Negative predictive value was stable across age, sex, and race strata. CONCLUSIONS The approach to assemble a HF-free cohort in REGARDS can serve as the basis for future studies to examine incident HF in REGARDS and similar studies.

中文翻译：

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从卒中地理和种族差异的原因 (REGARDS) 研究中收集和验证无心力衰竭的队列。

背景研究检查偶发性心力衰竭 (HF) 的研究仅限于特定人群。为了检查具有更广泛普遍性的心衰事件，需要使用地理多样化的样本来组装一个无心衰的队列。我们旨在开发和验证一种简单的基于药物的策略，用于从脑卒中地理和种族差异 (REGARDS) 研究的原因中组装一个无 HF 队列。方法 我们在基线家庭研究检查时检查了 REGARDS 参与者与 ≥ 6 个月的 Medicare 住院和门诊索赔数据。为了组建一个无 HF 队列，我们​​确定并排除了服用 HF 特定药物的参与者。为了验证这种方法，我们评估了该队列中的事件发生率，并使用基于医疗保险索赔的 HF 定义作为参考标准来评估诊断性能。结果 在 28,884 名符合条件的参与者中，3125 名被排除在提议的无 HF 队列之外，总共有 25,759 名（89%）参与者。根据用作参考的医疗保险定义，这种方法的阴性预测值范围为 95.0-99.2%。阴性预测值在年龄、性别和种族阶层中是稳定的。结论 在 REGARDS 中组建无 HF 队列的方法可以作为未来研究在 REGARDS 和类似研究中检查事件 HF 的基础。