Effectiveness and safety of oral anticoagulant therapy in a real-world cohort with atrial fibrillation: The SIESTA-A study protocol.

Introduction: Oral anticoagulants (OACs) are first-line drugs for stroke prevention in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). The introduction of new lines of therapy with direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) has led to a decreased use of vitamin K antagonists (VKAs). Comparative analyses of DOACs in clinical trials are scarce and the comparator has mostly been warfarin.

The Effect of Monthly Medication on Mortality After a Coronary Event.

Aim: The aim of this study was to analyze how the consumption of medication over time affects the survival rate in patients with a coronary event and whether there is a gender difference.

Methods: The study included 804 patients admitted to 4 hospitals with a coronary event during 2007. Monitoring after coronary event was carried out during 2007 and every 6 months in the subsequent 2 years (2008 and 2009) throughout the review of the clinical history of the patient.

[Selection of indicators for continuous monitoring of the impact of programs optimizing antimicrobial use in Primary Care].

Objectives: To determine core indicators for monitoring quality prescribing in Primary Care based on the evidence, and to assess the feasibility of these indicators for monitoring the use of antibiotics.

Methods: A literature review was carried out on quality indicators for antimicrobial prescribing through an electronic search limited to the period 2001-2012. It was completed with an "ad hoc" search on the websites of public national and international health services.

Improving the appropriateness of antimicrobial use in primary care after implementation of a local antimicrobial guide in both levels of care.

Objective: This study aims to assess the effectiveness of multiple interventions carried out during the implementation of a guide, on the improvement of the appropriateness of antimicrobial prescribing in primary care.

Design: This is a cross-sectional before/after study carried out in Aljarafe Health Care Area (Andalusia, Spain), with a population of 368,728 inhabitants assisted in 37 health centers.

Subjects: Subjects include patients with antibiotic prescriptions during 2009 (pre-intervention phase) or 2012 (postintervention phase) selected by simple random sampling (confidence level, 95%; accuracy, 5%), with infections registered in the electronic clinical history.

Compliance with quality prescribing indicators linked to financial incentives: what about not incentivized indicators?: an observational study.

Objective: The aims of this study were to investigate whether general practitioners (GPs) who complied with quality prescribing indicators included in the pay-for-performance programmes also complied with quality prescribing indicators which are not linked to incentives and to compare the prescribing behaviour between those GPs who showed compliance with quality prescribing indicators linked to financial incentives and those who did not.

Design And Methodology: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study which was conducted in 2007 in the Aljarafe Primary Care Area (Andalusia, Spain) and involved 37 Health Care Centres and 176 GPs. The main outcome was the results of a comparison of six quality prescribing indicators linked to incentives and 14 quality prescribing indicators not linked to incentives.