The Canadian journal of cardiology
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To pilot-test a simple checklist designed to improve coding of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in hospital discharge abstracts. ⋯ A simple checklist can be very easily applied, has extremely high sensitivity for confirming the presence of AMI, and identifies a clinically significant proportion of charts with false positive codes for AMI. Conversely, these findings support the high sensitivity (low false negative rates) of conventional coding practices for AMI in Canadian hospital records, be it as a primary or secondary diagnosis (eg, 95% detection rate). Usual coding, combined with the checklist for tentative ICD-9 410 diagnoses, would improve the accuracy of Canadian hospital records.