NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Among patients who survive a heart attack, those who don't fill their prescriptions for heart medications appear to have a higher mortality rate one year after they're discharged from the hospital, Canadian researchers report.
By Anthony J. Brown, MD
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Among patients who survive a heart attack, those who don't fill their prescriptions for heart medications appear to have a higher mortality rate one year after they're discharged from the hospital, Canadian researchers report.
"We hope that members of the healthcare team, including physicians, nurses and pharmacists, will use this information to reinforce their educational efforts aimed at ensuring heart attack patients fill their prescriptions after they leave the hospital," lead author Dr. Cynthia A. Jackevicius, from Toronto General Hospital, told Reuters Health.
Using a heart attack registry linked to administrative data in Ontario, Canada, the researchers evaluated the outcomes of 4,591 post-heart attack patients, over 65 years of age, who received a total of 12,832 prescriptions.
!ADVERTISEMENT!Seventy-three percent of the prescriptions were filled within 7 days and 79 percent were filled by 120 days, the researchers report in the medical journal Circulation. Heart drug prescriptions were significantly more likely than other drug prescriptions to be filled by 120 days (82 percent vs. 35 percent, respectively). However, only 74 percent of patients filled all their prescriptions after 120 days.
The death rate one year after hospital discharge was 44 percent higher among the patients who filled some versus all of their heart drug prescriptions, and was 80 percent higher in patients who filled none versus all of their prescriptions, the investigators found.
"Health care providers should be aware that some patients may not fill all of their prescriptions when they leave the hospital after having a heart attack, and they might consider making follow-up telephone calls to patients within the first week or two after their hospital stays to remind them," Jackevicius advised.
She added that further studies are needed to shed light on the reasons why patients who have just experienced a heart attack do not fill all of their prescriptions.
SOURCE: Circulation, February 26, 2008.
