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Transfusion‐related acute lung injury (TRALI), an adverse event occurring during or within 6 hours of transfusion, is a leading cause of transfusion‐associated fatalities reported to the US Food and Drug Administration. There is limited information on the validity of diagnosis codes for TRALI recorded in inpatient electronic medical records (EMRs).
We conducted a validation study to establish the positive predictive value (PPV) of TRALI International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD‐9‐CM) diagnosis codes recorded within a large hospital system between 2013 and 2015. A physician with critical care expertise confirmed the TRALI diagnosis. As TRALI is likely underdiagnosed, we used the specific code (518.7), and codes for respiratory failure (518.82) in combination with transfusion reaction (999.80, 999.89, E934.7).