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Physicians' Efficacy Requirements for Prescribing Medications to Persons with Alzheimer's Disease*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2010

Mark Oremus ,
Christina Wolfson ,
Howard Bergman  and
Alain C Vandal
Mark Oremus*
Affiliation:
Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Community Studies, S.M.B.D. Jewish General Hospital, Montreal Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McGill University
Christina Wolfson
Affiliation:
Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Community Studies, S.M.B.D. Jewish General Hospital, Montreal Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McGill University Department of Medicine, McGill University
Howard Bergman
Affiliation:
Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Community Studies, S.M.B.D. Jewish General Hospital, Montreal Division of Geriatric Medicine, S.M.B.D. Jewish General Hospital, Montreal, and McGill University
Alain C Vandal
Affiliation:
Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Community Studies, S.M.B.D. Jewish General Hospital, Montreal Department of Mathematics and Statistics, McGill University
*
Requests for offprints should be sent to: / Les demandes de tirés-à-part doivent être adressées à: Mark Oremus, PhD, McMaster Evidence-based Practice Centre, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University DTC, Room 326, 50 Main Street East, Hamilton, ON L8N 1E9. (oremusm@mcmaster.ca)
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Abstract

Physicians (N = 803) were contacted via postal survey and given two sets of efficacy measures for drug treatments in Alzheimer's disease: (a) the time that patients spend in a mild or moderate state of disease; (b) levels of modification to disease progression in the areas of cognition, behaviour, and mood, and ability to perform basic activities of daily living. Physicians reported that they would prescribe a hypothetical, new Alzheimer's disease medication if it would allow patients to remain in their current disease state for 15 (mild) or 11 (moderate) additional months. Most physicians required a permanent halt to, or some reversal of, disease progression as a prerequisite for prescribing; a few required substantial reversal. More stringent efficacy requirements were negatively associated with physicians' current prescribing of cholinesterase inhibitors to persons with Alzheimer's disease, although the effects were either small (odds ratio = 0.99) or not statistically significant at the 5 per cent level. The results suggest that physicians with stringent efficacy requirements for clinically relevant efficacy measures are less likely to prescribe cholinesterase inhibitors.

Résumé

Des médecins (N = 803) ont été interrogés par sondage postal sur deux ensembles de critères de jugement de l'efficacité des traitements médicamenteux de la maladie d'Alzheimer: (a) la durée de la maladie d'intensité légère ou modérée et (b) les degrés de modification de la progression de la maladie sur les plans de la cognition, du comportement et de l'humeur, et la capacité d'accomplir les activités courantes élémentaires. Les médecins ont répondu qu'ils prescriraient un nouveau médicament hypothétique s'il permettait de maintenir l'état actuel de la maladie pendant 15 mois (maladie légère) ou 11 mois (maladie modérée). La plupart des médecins s'attendent à ce que le médicament freine de façon permanente la progression de la maladie ou que celle-ci recule avant de prescrire le médicament ; quelques-uns ne le prescriront que s'il fait reculer la maladie de façon remarquable. Des critères d'efficacité stricts influencent négativement le comportement de prescription actuel des médecins en ce qui concerne les inhibiteurs de la cholinestérase dans le maladie d'Alzheimer, quoique l'effet soit faible (ratio d'incidence approché = 0,99), ou non statistiquement significatif au niveau de cinq p. cent. Les résultats révèlent que les médecins qui appliquent des critères de jugement stricts aux paramètres d'efficacité d'importance clinique sont moins enclins à prescrire des inhibiteurs de la cholinestérase.

Keywords

agingAlzheimer's diseaseefficacyprescribingdrug treatmentphysicianvieillissementmaladie d'Alzheimerefficacitéprescriptiontraitement médicamenteuxmédecin
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal on Aging / La Revue canadienne du vieillissement , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , Summer/Été 2007 , pp. 139 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Association on Gerontology 2007

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Footnotes

*

The authors wish to thank the physicians who kindly took part in the survey.

A portion of this manuscript was accepted as a poster presentation at the Canadian Association for Population Therapeutics Annual Conference, 16–19 April 2005, Vancouver, BC.

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