Publications by authors named "Wim Busschers"

Introduction: Telephone triage is pivotal for evaluating the urgency of patient care, and in the Netherlands, the Netherlands Triage Standard (NTS) demonstrates moderate discrimination for chest pain. To address this, the Safety First Prediction Rule (SFPR) was developed to improve the safety of ruling out acute coronary syndrome (ACS) during telephone triage.

Methods: We conducted an external validation of the SFPR using data from the TRACE study, a retrospective cohort study in out-of-hours primary care.

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Background: Hypertension is a modifiable risk factor for dementia affecting over 70% of individuals older than 60. Lowering dementia risk through preferential treatment with antihypertensive medication (AHM) classes that are otherwise equivalent in indication could offer a cost-effective, safe, and accessible approach to reducing dementia incidence globally. Certain AHM-classes have been associated with lower dementia risk, potentially attributable to angiotensin-II-receptor (Ang-II) stimulating properties.

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Importance: High visit-to-visit blood pressure variability (BPV) in late life may reflect increased dementia risk better than mean systolic blood pressure (SBP). Evidence from midlife to late life could be crucial to understanding this association.

Objective: To determine whether visit-to-visit BPV at different ages was differentially associated with lifetime incident dementia risk in community-dwelling individuals.

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Background: Digital interventions are increasingly used to support smoking cessation. Ex-smokers iCoach was a widely available app for smoking cessation used by 404,551 European smokers between June 15, 2011, and June 21, 2013. This provides a unique opportunity to investigate the uptake of a freely available digital smoking cessation intervention and its effects on smoking-related outcomes.

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Article Synopsis
  • - In the I CARE study, colon cancer patients were assigned to receive follow-up care from either general practitioners (GPs) or surgeons to analyze the impact on recurrence detection and time to recurrence.
  • - Out of 303 patients, slightly more recurrences were detected in the surgeon group compared to the GP group, but the difference was minimal and both groups showed similar outcomes in terms of mortality rates.
  • - The study concluded that follow-up care from GPs is just as effective as that from surgeons for detecting cancer recurrences and does not result in significant differences in patient survival rates.
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Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common cardiac arrhythmia with a lifetime risk of one in 4. Unfortunately, AF often remains undetected, particularly when it is paroxysmal, for which single time-point evaluation is less effective. Recently, unobtrusive cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices have become available, providing the opportunity to conduct prolonged electrocardiographic (ECG) monitoring in a patient-friendly manner.

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Objective: Patients treated for colon cancer report many symptoms that affect quality of life (QoL). Survivorship care aims at QoL improvement. In this study, we assess associations between symptoms and seeking supportive care and lower QoL and QoL changes overtime during survivorship care.

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This follow-up analysis of a randomized clinical trial investigates the association of multidomain interventions targeting vascular risk factors with dementia incidence among community-dwelling older adults.

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Background: Colon cancer is associated with an increased risk of physical and psychosocial morbidity, even after treatment. General practitioner (GP) care could be beneficial to help to reduce this morbidity. We aimed to assess quality of life (QOL) in patients who received GP-led survivorship care after treatment for colon cancer compared with those who received surgeon-led care.

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Background: Handheld single-lead electrocardiograms (1L-ECG) present a welcome addition to the diagnostic arsenal of general practitioners (GPs). However, little is known about GPs' 1L-ECG interpretation skills, and thus its reliability in real-world practice.

Objective: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of GPs in diagnosing atrial fibrillation or flutter (AF/Afl) based on 1L-ECGs, with and without the aid of automatic algorithm interpretation, as well as other relevant ECG abnormalities.

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Purpose: To assess the association of clinical variables and the development of specified chronic conditions in ICU survivors.

Materials And Methods: A retrospective cohort study, combining a national health insurance claims database and a national quality registry for ICUs. Claims data from 2012 to 2014 were combined with clinical data of patients admitted to an ICU during 2013.

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Cardiovascular risk prediction is mainly based on traditional risk factors that have been validated in middle-aged populations. However, associations between these risk factors and cardiovascular disease (CVD) attenuate with increasing age. Therefore, for older people the authors developed and internally validated risk prediction models for fatal and non-fatal CVD, (re)evaluated the predictive value of traditional and new factors, and assessed the impact of competing risks of non-cardiovascular death.

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Objectives: To describe the types and prevalence of chronic conditions in an ICU population and a population-based control group during the year before ICU admission and to quantify the risk of developing new chronic conditions in ICU patients compared with the control group.

Design: We conducted a retrospective cohort study, combining a national health insurance claims database and a national quality registry for ICUs. Claims data in the timeframe 2012-2014 were combined with clinical data of patients who had been admitted to an ICU during 2013.

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Introduction: Primary cardiovascular prevention through simultaneously targeting multiple risk factors may be even more effective than single risk factor modification in older adults. The effects of multicomponent cardiovascular prevention on cardiovascular risk are explored.

Study Design: Post hoc analysis of the cluster randomized Prevention of Dementia by Intensive Vascular care trial.

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Purpose: To identify subgroups of ICU patients with high healthcare utilization for healthcare expenditure management purposes such as prevention and targeted care.

Materials And Methods: We conducted a descriptive cohort study, combining a national health insurance claims database and a national quality registry database for ICUs. Claims data in the timeframe 2012-2014 were combined with the clinical data of ICU patients admitted to an ICU during 2013.

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Objectives: In South Asian populations, little is known about the effects of intensive interventions to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes on health behaviour. We examined the effectiveness at 2 years of a culturally targeted lifestyle intervention on diet, physical activity and determinants of behaviour change among South Asians at risk for diabetes.

Design: Randomised controlled trial with de facto masking.

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Objective: Although pre-pregnancy weight status and early pregnancy lipid profile are known to influence blood pressure course during pregnancy, little is known about how these two factors interact. The association between pre-pregnancy weight status and blood pressure course during pregnancy was assessed in the prospective ABCD study and the role (independent/mediating/moderating) of early pregnancy lipid profile in this association was determined.

Methods: We included 2500 normal weight (<25 kg/m2) and 600 overweight (≥25 kg/m2) women from the prospective ABCD-study with available measurements of non-fasting early pregnancy lipids [median (IQR): 13 (12-14) weeks of gestation] and blood pressure during pregnancy [mean (SD) = 10 (2.

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Background: Recent reports have suggested declining age-specific incidence rates of dementia in high-income countries over time. Improved education and cardiovascular health in early age have been suggested to be bringing about this effect. The aim of this study was to estimate the age-specific dementia incidence trend in primary care records from a large population in the Netherlands.

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Article Synopsis
  • Web-based interventions have been shown to effectively improve cardiovascular risk factors in older adults, which is crucial given the rising prevalence of cardiovascular disease due to aging populations.
  • A systematic review and meta-analysis of 57 studies involving nearly 20,000 participants revealed significant reductions in key risk factors such as blood pressure, HbA1c, LDL cholesterol, and weight, along with increased physical activity levels.
  • The most notable effects were seen in shorter-term studies and those that integrated online support with personal guidance, emphasizing the importance of combining technology with human assistance for optimal outcomes.
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Accumulations of health and social problems challenge current health systems. It is hypothesized that professionals should renew their expertise by adapting generalist, coaching, and population health orientation capacities to address these challenges. This study aimed to develop and validate an instrument for evaluating this renewal of professional expertise.

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  • The study aimed to investigate ethnic differences in arterial stiffness, a potential factor contributing to cardiovascular risks, among various ethnic groups including Dutch, South-Asian Surinamese, African Surinamese, and Ghanaians.
  • Results showed that South-Asian Surinamese exhibit higher arterial stiffness compared to Dutch individuals, especially in women, but these differences lessen when accounting for conventional cardiovascular risk factors like age and mean arterial pressure.
  • Notably, there were no differences in arterial stiffness among younger participants, suggesting that increased stiffness in South-Asian and African groups may arise from greater exposure to cardiovascular risk factors over time.
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