TABLE 1.

Large databases that can be leveraged for the study of ALD

	Description	Strengths	Weaknesses
Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network	US national transplant registry	Longitudinal; includes wait-list and transplant outcomes; low cost	Lacks data on several comorbidities
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey	Survey of US residents	Accurate; includes alcohol use, laboratory, and imaging data (e.g., FIB-4, steatosis)	Selection bias; cross-sectional design
Medicare	Health care claims for inpatient, outpatient, and pharmacy services	Beneficiary-level and provider-level data; comprehensive	Expensive; no laboratory data; predominantly older adults age ≥ 65
Optum Clinformatics DataMart	Commercial claims for inpatient, outpatient, and pharmacy services	Longitudinal; clinical use and expenditures; some laboratory data	Expensive; only privately insured; cannot cross over geographic, socioeconomic, and mortality files
Truven Marketscan	Claims from commercial and employer health plans, Medicare, and Medicaid	Longitudinal; person-specific clinical use and expenditures	Expensive; claims cannot be aggregated at provider level
Veterans Health Administration	Health system	Longitudinal and granular data; annual AUDIT-C	Not representative of US population; can be resource-intensive to access data
Nationwide Inpatient Sample	All-payer inpatient claims database; survey of participating hospitals	Low cost; easily accessible	Unable to track patients longitudinally; no laboratory data; no data from veterans

Abbreviations: AUDIT-C, Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test–Concise; and FIB-4, Fibrosis-4 Index.