The validity and reliability of the diagnosis of hyperkinetic disorders in the Danish Psychiatric Central Research Registry.

OBJECTIVE

To validate the diagnosis of hyperkinetic disorders (HD) in the Danish Psychiatric Central Research Registry (DPCRR) for children and adolescents aged 4 to 15 given in the years 1995 to 2005.

METHOD: From a total of 4568 participants, a representative random subsample of n=387 patients were used to validate the diagnosis. Patient files were systematically scored for the presence of ICD-10 criteria for HD and oppositional defiant disorder/conduct disorder (ODD/CD; F91). Further to this, an inter-rater reliability study was also conducted, whereby two experienced child and adolescent psychiatrists who were blind to patients discharge diagnoses, rated a random subsample of n=101 participants.

RESULTS

Information was available for 372 out of 387 patients. Out of n=372 available files, n=324 (86.8%) were evaluated to fulfil diagnostic criteria for HD. Due to missing information it was not possible to reach a conclusion for 5.1% of the cases, 3.8% of the diagnoses were registration errors, and in 4.3% of the files the diagnosis had to be rejected. Inter-rater agreement was high (κ=0.83, z=10.9, P<.001). The validity of hyperkinetic disorders, unspecified (F90.9) was lower and comorbid CD/ODD were under-diagnosed in the sample. All participants fulfilling HD criteria also fulfilled DSM-5-criteria for ADHD.

CONCLUSION

The risk of misclassification of patients with HD in the DPCRR is relatively low, with the exception of the diagnosis of hyperkinetic disorders, unspecified (F90.9).