Cardiovascular screening in rheumatoid arthritis: a cross-sectional primary care database study

BMC Family Practice

Research Article

Christian D Mallen¹  Samantha L Hider¹  Helen L Monk¹  Sara Muller¹ 

[1] Arthritis Research UK Primary Care Centre, Primary Care Sciences, Keele University, Keele, UK;

关键词: Rheumatoid Arthritis;    Rheumatoid Arthritis Patient;    Cardiovascular Screening;    Primary Care Record;    Quality Outcome Framework;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2296-14-150

 received in 2013-07-15, accepted in 2013-10-09,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPatients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are known to be at increased risk of vascular disease. It is not known whether screening for vascular risk factors occurs in primary care. The aim of this study was to determine whether guidance advocating cardiovascular screening in RA patients is being implemented in primary care.MethodsThis study was undertaken in a UK primary care consultation database. All patients with a diagnosis of RA between 2000 and 2008, and still registered with the GP practice in 2009 were matched by age, gender and GP practice to three non-RA patients. Evidence of screening for five traditional vascular risk factors (blood pressure, lipids, glucose, weight, smoking) was compared in those with and without RA using logistic regression models. A comparison was also made with diabetes.Results401 RA patients were identified and matched to 1198 non-RA patients. No differences in the overall rates of screening were found (all five risk factors: RA 24.9% vs no RA 25.6%), but RA patients were more likely to have a smoking status recorded (67% versus 62%). In contrast, those with diabetes were up to 12 times as likely to receive vascular screening.ConclusionsDespite the excess risk of vascular disease in patients with RA being of a similar magnitude to that seen in diabetes, patients with RA did not receive additional CVD screening in primary care, although this was achieved in patients with diabetes. More emphasis needs to be placed on ensuring those with RA are actively screened for cardiovascular disease in primary care.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Monk et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.