TY - JOUR A1 - Luger, Sebastian A1 - Hohmann, Carina A1 - Niemann, Daniela A1 - Kraft, Peter A1 - Gunreben, Ignaz A1 - Neumann-Haefelin, Tobias A1 - Kleinschnitz, Christoph A1 - Steinmetz, Helmuth A1 - Foerch, Christian A1 - Pfeilschifter, Waltraud T1 - Adherence to oral anticoagulant therapy in secondary stroke prevention - impact of the novel oral anticoagulants JF - Patient Preference and Adherence N2 - Background: Oral anticoagulant therapy (OAT) potently prevents strokes in patients with atrial fibrillation. Vitamin K antagonists (VKA) have been the standard of care for long-term OAT for decades, but non-VKA oral anticoagulants (NOAC) have recently been approved for this indication, and raised many questions, among them their influence on medication adherence. We assessed adherence to VKA and NOAC in secondary stroke prevention. Methods: All patients treated from October 2011 to September 2012 for ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack with a subsequent indication for OAT, at three academic hospitals were entered into a prospective registry, and baseline data and antithrombotic treatment at discharge were recorded. At the 1-year follow-up, we assessed the adherence to different OAT strategies and patients' adherence to their respective OAT. We noted OAT changes, reasons to change treatment, and factors that influence persistence to the prescribed OAT. Results: In patients discharged on OAT, we achieved a fatality corrected response rate of 73.3% (n=209). A total of 92% of these patients received OAT at the 1-year follow-up. We observed good adherence to both VKA and NOAC (VKA, 80.9%; NOAC, 74.8%; P=0.243) with a statistically nonsignificant tendency toward a weaker adherence to dabigatran. Disability at 1-year follow-up was an independent predictor of lower adherence to any OAT after multivariate analysis, whereas the choice of OAT did not have a relevant influence. Conclusion: One-year adherence to OAT after stroke is strong (>90%) and patients who switch therapy most commonly switch toward another OAT. The 1-year adherence rates to VKA and NOAC in secondary stroke prevention do not differ significantly between both therapeutic strategies. KW - transient ischemic attack KW - adherence KW - non-VKA oral anticoagulants KW - vitamin K antagonists KW - prevention KW - stroke KW - atrial fibrillation KW - warfarin KW - guidelines KW - scale Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-144477 VL - 9 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Walz, Yvonne A1 - Wegmann, Martin A1 - Dech, Stefan A1 - Raso, Giovanna A1 - Utzinger, Jürg T1 - Risk profiling of schistosomiasis using remote sensing: approaches, challenges and outlook JF - Parasites & Vectors N2 - Background: Schistosomiasis is a water-based disease that affects an estimated 250 million people, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. The transmission of schistosomiasis is spatially and temporally restricted to freshwater bodies that contain schistosome cercariae released from specific snails that act as intermediate hosts. Our objective was to assess the contribution of remote sensing applications and to identify remaining challenges in its optimal application for schistosomiasis risk profiling in order to support public health authorities to better target control interventions. Methods: We reviewed the literature (i) to deepen our understanding of the ecology and the epidemiology of schistosomiasis, placing particular emphasis on remote sensing; and (ii) to fill an identified gap, namely interdisciplinary research that bridges different strands of scientific inquiry to enhance spatially explicit risk profiling. As a first step, we reviewed key factors that govern schistosomiasis risk. Secondly, we examined remote sensing data and variables that have been used for risk profiling of schistosomiasis. Thirdly, the linkage between the ecological consequence of environmental conditions and the respective measure of remote sensing data were synthesised. Results: We found that the potential of remote sensing data for spatial risk profiling of schistosomiasis is - in principle - far greater than explored thus far. Importantly though, the application of remote sensing data requires a tailored approach that must be optimised by selecting specific remote sensing variables, considering the appropriate scale of observation and modelling within ecozones. Interestingly, prior studies that linked prevalence of Schistosoma infection to remotely sensed data did not reflect that there is a spatial gap between the parasite and intermediate host snail habitats where disease transmission occurs, and the location (community or school) where prevalence measures are usually derived from. Conclusions: Our findings imply that the potential of remote sensing data for risk profiling of schistosomiasis and other neglected tropical diseases has yet to be fully exploited. KW - ecology KW - scale KW - remote sensing KW - risk profiling KW - spatial modelling KW - schistosomiasis KW - geographical information system KW - intermediate host snail KW - epidemology Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-148778 VL - 8 IS - 163 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Smith, Craig J. A1 - Bray, Benjamin D. A1 - Hoffman, Alex A1 - Meisel, Andreas A1 - Heuschmann, Peter U. A1 - Wolfe, Charles D. A. A1 - Tyrrell, Pippa J. A1 - Rudd, Anthony G. T1 - Can a novel clinical risk score improve pneumonia prediction in acute stroke care? A UK multicenter cohort study JF - Journal of the American Heart Association N2 - Background Pneumonia frequently complicates stroke and has amajor impact on outcome. We derived and internally validated a simple clinical risk score for predicting stroke-associated pneumonia (SAP), and compared the performance with an existing score (A\(^{2}\)DS\(^{2}\)). Methods and Results We extracted data for patients with ischemic stroke or intracerebral hemorrhage from the Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme multicenter UK registry. The data were randomly allocated into derivation (n=11 551) and validation (n=11 648) samples. A multivariable logistic regression model was fitted to the derivation data to predict SAP in the first 7 days of admission. The characteristics of the score were evaluated using receiver operating characteristics (discrimination) and by plotting predicted versus observed SAP frequency in deciles of risk (calibration). Prevalence of SAP was 6.7% overall. The final 22-point score (ISAN: prestroke Independence [modified Rankin scale], Sex, Age, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale) exhibited good discrimination in the ischemic stroke derivation (C-statistic 0.79; 95% CI 0.77 to 0.81) and validation (C-statistic 0.78; 95% CI 0.76 to 0.80) samples. It was well calibrated in ischemic stroke and was further classified into meaningful risk groups (low 0 to 5, medium6 to 10, high 11 to 14, and very high >= 15) associated with SAP frequencies of 1.6%, 4.9%, 12.6%, and 26.4%, respectively, in the validation sample. Discrimination for both scores was similar, although they performed less well in the intracerebral hemorrhage patients with an apparent ceiling effect. Conclusions The ISAN score is a simple tool for predicting SAP in clinical practice. External validation is required in ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke cohorts. KW - acute ischemic stroke KW - medical complications KW - infection KW - diagnosis KW - stroke-associated pneumonia KW - clinical risk score KW - pneumonia KW - stroke, acute KW - metaanalysis KW - reliability KW - dysphagia KW - scale KW - mortality KW - intracerebral hemorrhage Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-144602 VL - 4 IS - 1 ER -