OBJECTIVES: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and spondyloarthritis (SpA) are chronic inflammatory rheumatic conditions with high levels of comorbidity requiring additional therapeutic attention. We aimed to compare the 3-yea...
BACKGROUND: Effective clinical decision support systems require accurate translation of practice recommendations into machine-readable artifacts; developing code sets that represent clinical concepts are an important step in this process. Many ...
Pneumococcal vaccination coverage of adults at risk for pneumococcal disease is below recommended levels. There is no observational data on pneumococcal vaccination and the incidence of lower respiratory tract infections in a general adult popu...
PURPOSE: The aim of this systematic review was (i) to assess whether electronic audit and feedback (A&F) is effective in primary care and (ii) to evaluate important features concerning content and delivery of the feedback in primary care, inclu...
OBJECTIVES: The present study investigated (1) trends in the prevalence and incidence of knee osteoarthritis over a 20-year period (1996-2015); (2) trends in multimorbidity and (3) trends in drug prescriptions. DESIGN: Registry-based study. SET...
OBJECTIVES: The aim of this paper was to describe the time trends in the prevalence of multimorbidity and polypharmacy in Flanders (Belgium) between 2000 and 2015, while controlling for age and sex. METHODS: Data were available from Intego, a F...
OBJECTIVES: To assess the prevalence and incidence of heart failure (HF) stages A to C/D and their evolution over a 16-year period. Additionally, trends in comorbidities and cardiovascular (CV) treatment in patients with HF were studied in the ...
OBJECTIVES: Chronic infections with hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) have a major impact on mortality worldwide. Although effective treatments are available for both HBV and HCV infection, < /50% of the patients are even d...
Acute gastroenteritis (AGE) remains a common condition in both low- and high-income countries. In Belgium, however, there is currently a lack of information on the societal health and economic impact of AGE. We conducted a retrospective study u...
BACKGROUND: The current study evaluated time trends of statin use and incidence of recurrent CVD in secondary prevention from 1999 to 2013 and investigated which factors were associated with statin use in secondary prevention. METHODS: Intego i...
BACKGROUND: Health data collected during routine care have important potential for reuse for other purposes, especially as part of a learning health system to advance the quality of care. Many sources of bias have been identified through the li...
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Background: Associations between irritable bowel syndrome and other health problems have been described, but comprehensive reports are missing, especially in primary care. Aims: To investigate which health proble...
To assess factors associated with Prolonged Inaction (PI) in insulin-naïve patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM). PI was defined as the absence of treatment initiation or intensification for ≥12 months despite HbA1c >7% (53mmol/mol)....
General practitioners (GPs) as a group have been identified as playing an important role in gonorrhoea management in Flanders. Belgian guidelines recommended ceftriaxone or alternatively spectinomycin from 2008 onwards and azithromycin combinat...
BACKGROUND: The number of newly diagnosed gonorrhoea and syphilis cases has increased in Flanders in recent years. Our aim was to investigate, to which extent these diagnoses were registered by general practitioners (GPs), and to examine opport...
BACKGROUND: To date, there has been no comprehensive study on the association between atrial fibrillation (AF) and multimorbidity. The present study investigated the epidemiology of AF and the association between multimorbidity and the onset of...
OBJECTIVES: We assessed the association between herpes zoster (HZ) and herpes simplex (HS) occurrence whilst controlling for risk factors of HZ. METHODS: Using a Belgian general practitioner network, a retrospective cohort study with 3736 HZ pa...
OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to evaluate the level of target achievement for key modifiable cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors (dyslipidaemia, arterial hypertension, hyperglycaemia, smoking, and physical inactivity) in Belg...
BACKGROUND: Intego is the only operational computerized morbidity registration network in Belgium based on general practice data. Intego collects data from over 90 general practitioners. All the information is routinely collected in the electro...
BACKGROUND: European disease-specific antibiotic prescribing quality indicators (APQI) were proposed for seven acute indications (bronchitis, upper respiratory infection, cystitis, tonsillitis, sinusitis, otitis media and pneumonia): (a) the pe...
SUMMARY The association between herpes zoster and subsequent cancer risk is still unclear. Consequently, doubts remain regarding the need for investigation of herpes patients for co-existing or subsequent malignancy. This is a retrospective coh...
Evidence on the influence of comorbidity and comedication on clinical outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus is scarce.
BACKGROUND: Associations between type 2 diabetic patients and a higher risk of developing cancer have been reported worldwide. Recently, a protective effect of metformin has been described. AIM: To examine in the Belgian primary care population...
ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Assessment of risk for serious cardiovascular outcome after syncope is difficult. Objectives: To determine the incidence of first syncope in primary care. To investigate the relation between syncope and serious cardiovasc...
BACKGROUND: General Practitioners (GPs) play a central role in controlling an important risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, i.e. cholesterol levels in serum. In the past few decades different studies have been published on the effect of tr...
