| back to overview |
Silber S, Mahn M,
- Secondary Prevention with Clopidogrel in Patients with clinically proven Atherothrombosis in Private Practices of General Physicians.
- An analysis of 8430 patients.
Perfusion, 17: 178-184, 2004
Summary:
- Background:
- There are no pharmacoepidemiologic studies available as yet on the use of clopidogrel in primary care. Therefore, in an observational study 8,430 patients of 1,991 primary care practices (general practitioners and specialists of internal medicine in primary care) treated with clopidogrel were documented.
- Methods:
- Participating physicians collected a defined set of sociodemographic data, the actual manifestation of atherothrombosis (myocardial infarction [CHD]), stroke [CVD], or peripheral arterial occlusive disease [PAOD], previous manifestations of atherothrombosis, as well as actual and former diagnostic measures.
Results:- The prevalence of CHD (51%), CVD (36.9 %), and PAOD (18.6%) was similar to prevalences reported by other studies. One out of three patients had two or three atherosclerotic manifestations in parallel. The proportion of fewer female than male patients in all age groups. Clopidgrel was predominantly used by patients with at least two atherothrombotic events (95 %). Every second
patient on clopidogrel (53 %) took aspirin as well with a mean medication time of 20.4 months.
Conclusion:- There are more than one manifestation of atherothrombosis in a relevant proportion of patients. Clopidogrel is often prescribed in combination with aspirin. It is used, however, for more than two years only in one of four patients with respect to the chronic course of atherothrombosis.
Keywords: clopidogrel, aspirin, primary care, atherothrombosis, coronary artery
disease, cerebrovascular disease, peripheral arterial occlusive disease, risk
factors, secondary prevention, co-morbidity, pharmacoepidemiology
