Continuity of care and consultation mode in general practice: a cross-sectional and longitudinal study using patient-level and practice-level data from before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in England.

Objectives: Investigate trends in continuity of care with a general practitioner (GP) before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Identify whether continuity of care is associated with consultation mode, controlling for other patient and practice characteristics.

Design: Retrospective cross-sectional and longitudinal observational studies.

Antibiotic prescribing in remote versus face-to-face consultations for acute respiratory infections in primary care in England: an observational study using target maximum likelihood estimation.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an ongoing increase in the use of remote consultations in general practice in England. Although the evidence is limited, there are concerns that the increase in remote consultations could lead to more antibiotic prescribing.

Methods: In this cohort study, we used patient-level primary care data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink to estimate the association between consultation mode (remote versus face-to-face) and antibiotic prescribing in England for acute respiratory infections (ARI) between April 2021 and March 2022.

Consultation Rate and Mode by Deprivation in English General Practice From 2018 to 2022: Population-Based Study.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on primary care service delivery with an increased use of remote consultations. With general practice delivering record numbers of appointments and rising concerns around access, funding, and staffing in the UK National Health Service, we assessed contemporary trends in consultation rate and modes (ie, face-to-face versus remote).

Objective: This paper describes trends in consultation rates in general practice in England for key demographics before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Piloting of a minimum data set for older people living in care homes in England: protocol for a longitudinal, mixed-methods study.

Introduction: Health and care data are routinely collected about care home residents in England, yet there is no way to collate these data to inform benchmarking and improvement. The Developing research resources And minimum data set for Care Homes' Adoption and use study has developed a prototype minimum data set (MDS) for piloting.

Methods And Analysis: A mixed-methods longitudinal pilot study will be conducted in 60 care homes (approximately 960 residents) in 3 regions of England, using resident data from cloud-based digital care home records at two-time points.

Association between household context and emergency hospital use in older people: a retrospective cohort study on indicators for people living alone or living with somebody with frailty, developed from routine healthcare data in England.

Objectives: To derive two household context factors - living alone and living in a two-person household with a person who is frail - from routine administrative health data and to assess their association with emergency hospital use in people aged 65 or over.

Design: Retrospective cohort study using national pseudonymised hospital data and pseudonymised address data derived from a minimised version of the Master Patient Index, a central database of all patient registrations in England.

Setting: England-wide.

Alcohol use recording in adults with depression in English primary care: a cross-sectional study.

Objectives: To investigate alcohol use recording in people with newly diagnosed depression in English primary care and individual characteristics associated with the recording of alcohol use.

Design: A population-based cross-sectional study.

Setting: Primary care data from English practices contributing to the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink.

Long-Term Risk of Skin Cancer and Lymphoma in Users of Topical Tacrolimus and Pimecrolimus: Final Results from the Extension of the Cohort Study Protopic Joint European Longitudinal Lymphoma and Skin Cancer Evaluation (JOELLE).

Purpose: Evidence is insufficient to infer whether topical calcineurin inhibitors (TCIs; tacrolimus and pimecrolimus) cause malignancy. The study objective was to estimate the long-term risk of skin cancer and lymphoma associated with topical TCI use in adults and children, separately.

Patients And Methods: A cohort study in Denmark, Sweden, UK, and the Netherlands was conducted.

Quality and completeness of diagnoses recorded in the new CPRD Aurum Database: evaluation of pulmonary embolism.

Purpose: The Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) now provides a new medical record database, CPRD Aurum. This is the first of several studies being undertaken to assess the quality and completeness of CPRD Aurum data for research endeavors.

Methods: We identified patients with a pulmonary embolism (PE) diagnosis from a random sample of 50 000 patients in CPRD Aurum and compared the diagnoses using data from Hospital Episode Statistics (HES).

Completeness and validity of alcohol recording in general practice within the UK: a cross-sectional study.

Background: Since 2010 the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has recommended screening adults for excessive alcohol consumption to try and help prevent alcohol-use disorders. Little is known about the extent to which these recommendations are followed, and the resulting completeness and validity of alcohol-related data recording in primary care.

Objective: To investigate the completeness and accuracy of recording of alcohol use within primary care records in the UK.

How Clinical Practice Research Datalink data are used to support pharmacovigilance.

Pharmacovigilance can be defined as the science of monitoring medicines and vaccines after license for use, the purpose of which is to quantify and characterise the safety profile of a medicine, identify previously unknown adverse reactions, inform risk-benefit assessment, and support the development of actions that can be taken to reduce risks, optimise benefits and monitor their effectiveness. This review discusses the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD), which is the source of the largest research database in the UK with longitudinal, representative primary care data linked to data from other healthcare settings. CPRD supports international pharmacovigilance by providing a large, anonymised representative general population database with comprehensive capture of patient risk factors and outcomes to researchers within academic, regulatory and pharmaceutical organisations.

Trimethoprim use for urinary tract infection and risk of adverse outcomes in older patients: cohort study.

Objective: To determine if trimethoprim use for urinary tract infection (UTI) is associated with an increased risk of acute kidney injury, hyperkalaemia, or sudden death in the general population.

Design: Cohort study.

Setting: UK electronic primary care records from practices contributing to the Clinical Practice Research Datalink linked to the Hospital Episode Statistics database.

Asthma and lung cancer, after accounting for co-occurring respiratory diseases and allergic conditions: a systematic review protocol.

Introduction: Asthma is one of the most frequently diagnosed respiratory diseases in the UK, and commonly co-occurs with other respiratory and allergic diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and atopic dermatitis. Previous studies have shown an increased risk of lung cancer related to asthma, but the evidence is mixed when accounting for co-occurring respiratory diseases and allergic conditions. A systematic review of published data that investigate the relationship between asthma and lung cancer, accounting for co-occurring respiratory and allergic diseases, will be conducted to investigate the independent association of asthma with lung cancer.