Family practice
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Prevention of cardiovascular disease in the elderly is becoming increasingly important. GPs are in a unique position to initiate preventive interventions in this age group. However, it is not clear which strategy a GP should follow to identify patients at increased cardiovascular risk-case finding or screening. ⋯ A single cardiovascular health check in the elderly can detect a considerable number of risk indicators that are unknown to a patient's GP. In most cases, however, the detection of hypertension or cholesterol > or = 6.5 mmol/l did not lead to interventions by the GP. More efforts are needed to ensure that the beneficial effects of these interventions are not limited to participants in clinical trials but can be extended to patients in general practice.
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We aimed to describe the use of out-of-hours service and analyse attendance prognosis for frequent attenders and other groups of attenders, and to present a concept describing frequent attendance over time. ⋯ Frequent attendance could be regarded as a short-lived phenomenon. On the other hand, FAs were the most stable attenders of all groups of attenders over the years. Older FAs had the highest probability of remaining FAs.
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Multicenter Study
Long-term prognosis of acute low back pain in patients seen in general practice: a 1-year prospective follow-up study.
We aimed to examine the prognosis of acute low back pain (LBP) in patients in general practice and to identify prognostic factors associated with the long-term prognosis based on information immediately available to the GP. ⋯ LBP in general practice has a good prognosis with regard to sick leave, but a high proportion of patients continue to complain of LBP. We were not able to identify objective measures that strongly predict the prognosis of the individual LBP patient. The overall assessment by the GPs seems to be the most important predictor associated with the long-term outcome.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
How does a change in the administration method affect the reliability of the COOP/WONCA Charts? World Organization of National Colleges, Academies and Academic Associations of General Practitioners/Family Physicians.
An interviewer is often needed to administer the COOP/WONCA Charts to Chinese patients, and this may affect the reliability of results. ⋯ The Chinese COOP/WONCA Charts were reliable in detecting real differences when administered by an interviewer. A change in the method of administration significantly decreased the reliability of the results. The use of more than one method of data collection in the same survey should be discouraged.