Publications by authors named "Vincent de Valk"
Article Synopsis
- European health authorities are increasingly worried about rising prices for new cancer medications that aren't necessarily improving health outcomes, impacting healthcare system sustainability.
- There's a discussion among payers and advisers about various pricing strategies for these new treatments, including effectiveness levels and different pricing models.
- As new cancer drugs and therapies emerge, coupled with high prices and complex discounting, there will likely be more scrutiny and demand for transparency in pricing, especially as patents on existing medicines expire.
Background: For a patient, drug switches are not desirable (either between a brand-name drug and a generic drug, or between two generic drugs of the same active substance). Research into the causes of drug switches, and related adverse drug reactions, is hampered by the absence of quantitative data on drug switches.
Methods: We describe the frequency of drug switches in the Netherlands for a selection of active substances.
We performed a retrospective cohort study in the Dutch patient population to identify active substances with a relatively high number of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) potentially related to drug switching. For this, we analyzed drug switches and reported ADRs related to switching between June 1, 2009, and December 31, 2016, for a selection of 20 active substances. We also compared pharmacovigilance analyses based on the absolute, switch-corrected, and user-corrected numbers of ADRs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe initial theoretical concept of a polypill was a fixed-dosed combination pill containing an antiplatelet agent, a cholesterol-lowering agent and multiple blood pressure-lowering agents aimed at the prevention of atherosclerotic vascular disease in the population aged 55 years and up. The reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease does not depend on the cholesterol level and blood pressure at the start of treatment. The pharmacological reduction in risk factors in individuals with a high risk of atherosclerotic vascular disease is often suboptimal, partly due to the complexity of the guidelines and low adherence to the therapy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: There are many drug-drug interactions (D-DI) of which some may cause severe adverse patient outcomes. Dispensing interacting drug combinations should be avoided when the risks are higher than the benefits. The objective of this study was to identify determinants of dispensing undesirable interacting drug combinations by community pharmacies in the Netherlands.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: We sought to assess the relationship between completeness of revascularization and adverse events at one year in the ARTS (Arterial Revascularization Therapies Study) trial.
Background: There is uncertainty to what extent degree of completeness of revascularization, using up-to-date techniques, influences medium-term outcome.
Methods: After consensus between surgeon and cardiologist regarding the potential for equivalence in the completeness of revascularization, 1,205 patients with multivessel disease were randomly assigned to either bypass surgery or stent implantation.