Measles: how many hospitalised cases are we missing?

Abstract

We aimed to determine whether the Victorian measles surveillance system had missed hospitalised cases of measles during an inter-epidemic period. We searched the Victorian Inpatient Minimum Dataset (VIMD) for the period 1 January 1997 to 30 June 1998 to identify patients with ICD-9 discharge codes for measles (055). The data were compared with that held in the Victorian measles surveillance dataset. The hospital case notes of patients identified in the VIMD but not in the measles surveillance dataset were reviewed systematically to determine whether the patients met case definitions for laboratory-confirmed or clinically compatible measles. Sixteen admissions (15 patients) were identified wi..