"Diagnosis Creep": Are Some AF Patients Overtreated?
The issue of earlier classification of medical conditions — known as "diagnosis creep" — is leading to many patients becoming eligible for treatments at earlier stages in their disease course, without those treatments having been validated in those particular groups.
This concern has been highlighted recently in the atrial fibrillation (AF) field, with the recent change in the definition of hypertension in the US at lower levels of blood pressure causing a lot more patients to become eligible for oral anticoagulation at an earlier stage in their AF course.
US researchers analyzed data from 316,388 patients with AF from the National Cardiovascular Data Registry Practice Innovation and Clinical Excellence (PINNACLE) outpatient quality improvement registry, and found that at 36 months follow-up, 83.5% of patients met the new 130/80 mm Hg definition of hypertension, while only 53.3% met the previous 140/90 mm Hg definition.
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