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Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a common chronic respiratory disease responsible for significant morbidity and mortality. Population-based health administrative databases provide a powerful and unbiased way of studying COPD in the population, however, their ability to accurately identify patients with this disease must first be confirmed. The objective was to validate population-based health administrative definitions of COPD. Previously abstracted medical records of adults over the age of 35 randomly selected from primary care practices in Ontario, Canada were reviewed by an expert panel to establish if an individual did or did not have a diagnosis of COPD. These reference designations were then linked to each individual's respective health administrative database record and compared with predefine health administrative data definitions of COPD. Concepts of diagnostic test evaluation …