OBJECTIVE: To estimate the prevalence of known diabetes in a Swedish county (Skaraborg) and to evaluate capture-recapture methods for validation of the diabetes prevalence. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Four sources were used to find known diabetic patients: 1) the Skaraborg Diabetes Registry (SDR), a case-finding inventory, 2) an administrative hospital registry, 3) a registry for the retinopathy screening program, and 4) a pharmacy prescription inventory. The capture-recapture method was applied to various combinations of sources to determine the prevalence of diabetes. RESULTS: The completeness of the SDR was 88.4 +/- 1.3%, indicating a diabetes prevalence of 3.20 +/- 0.08%. When the SDR was not used as one of the sources, the estimated prevalence varied between 2.2 and 4.5%. CONCLUSIONS: A case-finding registry is important in reliably estimating the prevalence of diabetes.
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Berger et al. (1998) studied this question.