Browsing by Author "Alexander, Karen P"
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Item Open Access Management of Atrial Fibrillation in Older Patients by Morbidity Burden: Insights From Get With The Guidelines-Atrial Fibrillation.(Journal of the American Heart Association, 2020-12) Dalgaard, Frederik; Xu, Haolin; Matsouaka, Roland A; Russo, Andrea M; Curtis, Anne B; Rasmussen, Peter Vibe; Ruwald, Martin H; Fonarow, Gregg C; Lowenstern, Angela; Hansen, Morten L; Pallisgaard, Jannik L; Alexander, Karen P; Alexander, John H; Lopes, Renato D; Granger, Christopher B; Lewis, William R; Piccini, Jonathan P; Al-Khatib, Sana MBackground Knowledge is scarce regarding how multimorbidity is associated with therapeutic decisions regarding oral anticoagulants (OACs) in patients with atrial fibrillation. Methods and Results We conducted a cross-sectional study of hospitalized patients with atrial fibrillation using the Get With The Guidelines-Atrial Fibrillation registry from 2013 to 2019. We identified patients ≥65 years and eligible for OAC therapy. Using 16 available comorbidity categories, patients were stratified by morbidity burden. A multivariable logistic regression model was used to determine the odds of receiving OAC prescription at discharge by morbidity burden. We included 34 174 patients with a median (interquartile range) age of 76 (71-83) years, 56.6% women, and 41.9% were not anticoagulated at admission. Of these patients, 38.6% had 0 to 2 comorbidities, 50.7% had 3 to 5 comorbidities, and 10.7% had ≥6 comorbidities. The overall discharge OAC prescription was high (85.6%). The prevalence of patients with multimorbidity increased from 59.7% in 2014 to 64.3% in 2019 (P trend=0.002). Using 0 to 2 comorbidities as the reference, the adjusted odds ratio (95% CI) of OAC prescription were 0.93 (0.82, 1.05) for patients with 3 to 5 comorbidities and 0.72 (0.60, 0.86) for patients with ≥6 comorbidities. In those with ≥6 comorbidities, the most common reason for nonprescription of OACs were frequent falls/frailty (31.0%). Conclusions In a contemporary quality-of-care database of hospitalized patients with atrial fibrillation eligible for OAC therapy, multimorbidity was common. A higher morbidity burden was associated with a lower odds of OAC prescription. This highlights the need for interventions to improve adherence to guideline-recommended anticoagulation in multimorbid patients with atrial fibrillation.Item Open Access Portfolio of clinical research in adult cardiovascular disease as reflected in ClinicalTrials.gov.(Journal of the American Heart Association, 2013-09-26) Alexander, Karen P; Kong, David F; Starr, Aijing Z; Kramer, Judith; Chiswell, Karen; Tasneem, Asba; Califf, Robert MCardiovascular medicine is widely regarded as a vanguard for evidence-based drug and technology development. Our goal was to describe the cardiovascular clinical research portfolio from ClinicalTrials.gov.We identified 40 970 clinical research studies registered between 2007 and 2010 in which patients received diagnostic, therapeutic, or other interventions per protocol. By annotating 18 491 descriptors from the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Heading thesaurus and 1220 free-text terms to select those relevant to cardiovascular disease, we identified studies that related to the diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of diseases of the heart and peripheral arteries in adults (n = 2325 [66%] included from review of 3503 potential studies). The study intervention involved a drug in 44.6%, a device or procedure in 39.3%, behavioral intervention in 8.1%, and biological or genetic interventions in 3.0% of the trials. More than half of the trials were postmarket approval (phase 4, 25.6%) or not part of drug development (no phase, 34.5%). Nearly half of all studies (46.3%) anticipated enrolling 100 patients or fewer. The majority of studies assessed biomarkers or surrogate outcomes, with just 31.8% reporting a clinical event as a primary outcome.Cardiovascular studies registered on ClinicalTrials.gov span a range of study designs. Data have limited verification or standardization and require manual processes to describe and categorize studies. The preponderance of small and late-phase studies raises questions regarding the strength of evidence likely to be generated by the current portfolio and the potential efficiency to be gained by more research consolidation.Item Open Access Stable ischemic heart disease in the older adults.(J Geriatr Cardiol, 2016-02) Dai, Xuming; Busby-Whitehead, Jan; Forman, Daniel E; Alexander, Karen P