Comparing secondary prevention for patients with coronary heart disease and stroke attending Australian general practices: a cross-sectional study using nationwide electronic database.

Objectives: To compare secondary prevention care for patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke, exploring particularly the influences due to frequency and regularity of primary care visits.

Setting: Secondary prevention for patients (≥18 years) in the National Prescription Service administrative electronic health record database collated from 458 Australian general practice sites across all states and territories.

Design: Retrospective cross-sectional and panel study.

Engagement and fidelity of a cardiovascular disease prevention-focused digital health intervention in cardiology outpatient waiting rooms: a mixed-methods study.

Introduction: We delivered a video-based, cardiovascular disease prevention focused intervention in cardiology waiting rooms that increased motivation to improve cardiovascular risk behaviours and satisfaction with clinic services. To better understand the potential generalisability and scalability of such waiting room interventions, this study evaluated the fidelity of intervention delivery and barriers and enablers to implementation.

Methods: Mixed-methods process evaluation conducted among intervention participants in a randomised clinical trial.

Availability and affordability of medicines and cardiovascular outcomes in 21 high-income, middle-income and low-income countries.

Objectives: We aimed to examine the relationship between access to medicine for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) among people at high risk of CVD in high-income countries (HICs), upper and lower middle-income countries (UMICs, LMICs) and low-income countries (LICs) participating in the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study.

Methods: We defined high CVD risk as the presence of any of the following: hypertension, coronary artery disease, stroke, smoker, diabetes or age >55 years. Availability and affordability of blood pressure lowering drugs, antiplatelets and statins were obtained from pharmacies.

What is the significance of unrecognized non-Q-wave myocardial infarction?

Clara Kayei Chow discusses the clinical implications of a new study that sought to examine the frequency and prognosis of unrecognized non-Q-wave myocardial infarction.

Environmental and societal influences acting on cardiovascular risk factors and disease at a population level: a review.

It has long been known that cardiovascular disease (CVD) rates vary considerably among populations, across space and through time. It is now apparent that most of the attributable risk for myocardial infarction 'within' populations from across the world can be ascribed to the varying levels of a limited number of risk factors among individuals in a population. Individual risk factors (e.

Greater adverse effects of cholesterol and diabetes on carotid intima-media thickness in South Asian Indians: comparison of risk factor-IMT associations in two population-based surveys.

Asian Indians appear particularly susceptible to coronary heart disease compared with other ethnic groups. We compared the effects of vascular risk factors on carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) in a population of South Asians from Andhra Pradesh, India with a population of Caucasians from Perth, Australia. Cardiovascular risk factors and ultrasound-assessed carotid IMT were measured in randomly selected adults from two villages in rural India (n=303) and compared to those for randomly sampled adults from Australia (n=1111).

Significant lipid, adiposity and metabolic abnormalities amongst 4535 Indians from a developing region of rural Andhra Pradesh.

Background And Objective: Both migrant and local urban populations of Asian Indians have high rates of cardiovascular disease. Metabolic risk factors appear key to this phenomenon but data from rural India are few. We sought to determine the prevalence and distribution of lipids, obesity and metabolic syndrome in a rural region of Andhra Pradesh.

The role of the 12-lead ECG as a screening test for cardiac source of embolus.

Background: Investigation for cardiac source of embolus (CSE) is one of the commonest referrals for transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) of hospital inpatients, but has a relatively low-diagnostic yield. We sort to investigate whether 12-lead ECG might be useful in screening patients to obviate the need for TTE, in a subset of patients referred for echocardiographic investigation of cardiac source of embolus.

Methods: We collected ECG and echo data for 400 consecutively referred inpatients for TTE investigation of possible cardiac source of embolus.