Browsing by Author "Cushman, William C."

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    Cardiovascular outcome trials in patients with chronic kidney disease: challenges associated with selection of patients and endpoints
    (Oxford Academic, 2019-03-14) Rossignol, Patrick; Agarwal, Rajiv; Canaud, Bernard; Charney, Alan; Chatellier, Gilles; Craig, Jonathan C.; Cushman, William C.; Gansevoort, Ronald T.; Fellström, Bengt; Garza, Dahlia; Guzman, Nicolas; Holtkamp, Frank A.; London, Gerard M.; Massy, Ziad A.; Mebazaa, Alexandre; Mol, Peter G.M.; Pfeffer, Marc A.; Rosenberg, Yves; Ruilope, Luis M.; Seltzer, Jonathan; Shah, Amil M.; Shah, Salim; Singh, Bhupinder; Stefánsson, Bergur V.; Stockbridge, Norman; Gattis Stough, Wendy; Thygesen, Kristian; Walsh, Michael; Wanner, Christoph; Warnock, David G.; Wilcox, Christopher S.; Wittes, Janet; Pitt, Bertram; Thompson, Aliza; Zannad, Faiez; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Although cardiovascular disease is a major health burden for patients with chronic kidney disease, most cardiovascular outcome trials have excluded patients with advanced chronic kidney disease. Moreover, the major cardiovascular outcome trials that have been conducted in patients with end-stage renal disease have not demonstrated a treatment benefit. Thus, clinicians have limited evidence to guide the management of cardiovascular disease in patients with chronic kidney disease, particularly those on dialysis. Several factors contribute to both the paucity of trials and the apparent lack of observed treatment effect in completed studies. Challenges associated with conducting trials in this population include patient heterogeneity, complexity of renal pathophysiology and its interaction with cardiovascular disease, and competing risks for death. The Investigator Network Initiative Cardiovascular and Renal Clinical Trialists (INI-CRCT), an international organization of academic cardiovascular and renal clinical trialists, held a meeting of regulators and experts in nephrology, cardiology, and clinical trial methodology. The group identified several research priorities, summarized in this paper, that should be pursued to advance the field towards achieving improved cardiovascular outcomes for these patients. Cardiovascular and renal clinical trialists must partner to address the uncertainties in the field through collaborative research and design clinical trials that reflect the specific needs of the chronic and end-stage kidney disease populations, with the shared goal of generating robust evidence to guide the management of cardiovascular disease in patients with kidney disease.
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    A Method to Quantify Mean Hypertension Treatment Daily Dose Intensity Using Health Care System Data
    (American Medical Association, 2021-01-04) Min, Lillian; Ha, Jin-Kyung; Aubert, Carole E.; Hofer, Timothy P.; Sussman, Jeremy B.; Langa, Kenneth M.; Tinetti, Mary; Hyungjin Myra, Kim; Maciejewski, Matthew L.; Gillon, Leah; Larkin, Angela; Chan, Chiao-Li; Kerr, Eve A.; Bravata, Dawn; Cushman, William C.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Importance: Simple measures of hypertension treatment, such as achievement of blood pressure (BP) targets, ignore the intensity of treatment once the BP target is met. High-intensity treatment involves increased treatment burden and can be associated with potential adverse effects in older adults. A method was previously developed to identify older patients receiving intense hypertension treatment by low BP and number of BP medications using national Veterans Health Administration and Medicare Part D administrative pharmacy data to evaluate which BP medications a patient is likely taking on any given day. Objective: To further develop and validate a method to more precisely quantify dose intensity of hypertension treatment using only health system administrative pharmacy fill data. Design, setting, and participants: Observational, cross-sectional study of 319 randomly selected older veterans in the national Veterans Health Administration health care system who were taking multiple BP-lowering medications and had a total of 3625 ambulatory care visits from July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2013. Measure development and medical record review occurred January 1, 2017, through November 30, 2018, and data analysis was conducted from December 1, 2019, to August 31, 2020. Main outcomes and measures: For each BP-lowering medication, a moderate hypertension daily dose (HDD) was defined as half the maximum dose above which no further clinical benefit has been demonstrated by that medication in hypertension trials. Patients' total HDD was calculated using pharmacy data (pharmacy HDDs), accounting for substantial delays in refills (>30 days) when a patient's pill supply was stretched (eg, cutting existing pills in half). As an external comparison, the pharmacy HDDs were correlated with doses manually extracted from clinicians' visit notes (clinically noted HDDs). How well the pharmacy HDDs correlated with clinically noted HDDs was calculated (using C statistics). To facilitate interpretation, HDDs were described in association with the number of medications. Results: A total of 316 patients (99.1%) were male; the mean (SD) age was 75.6 (7.2) years. Pharmacy HDDs were highly correlated (r = 0.92) with clinically noted HDDs, with a mean (SD) of 2.7 (1.8) for pharmacy HDDs and 2.8 (1.8) for clinically noted HDDs. Pharmacy HDDs correlated with high-intensity, clinically noted HDDs ranging from a C statistic of 92.8% (95% CI, 92.0%-93.7%) for 2 or more clinically noted HDDs to 88.1% (95% CI, 85.5%-90.6%) for 6 or more clinically noted HDDs. Conclusions and relevance: This study suggests that health system pharmacy data may be used to accurately quantify hypertension regimen dose intensity. Together with clinic-measured BP, this tool can be used in future health system-based research or quality improvement efforts to fine-tune, manage, and optimize hypertension treatment in older adults.