Prediction of failures

This Mobile App is a calculator indicating the likelihood that a primary care physician looking after a hypertensive patient aged 25 years or older, not pregnant and who is taking anti-hypertensive treatment, will commit a failure (not follow recommended guidelines) related to prescribing antiplatelet therapy. This failure will be committed if the following is not fulfilled: a hypertensive patient should only receive antiplatelet therapy if his/her cardiovascular risk is SCORE ≥ 10% or if he/she is on secondary cardiovascular prevention.

To calculate this likelihood we need to know the following patient parameters: duration (in years) of hypertension, systolic blood pressure, gender, dyslipidemia, smoking, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and age.

This application will calculate a score based on the risk given by the above parameters. A patient is more likely to experience a prescribing failure if he/she has had a diagnosis of hypertension for longer, has higher systolic blood pressure figures, is a man, has dyslipidemia/diabetes/cardiovascular disease, smokes, and is older. The resulting score will situate the patient in a particular risk group and each group will have a different likelihood that the physician will make a failure when prescribing antiplatelet therapy.

If a patient is found to be in a group with a high added risk, we should immediately undertake a strict control of that patient’s medication, aimed at reducing future sequelae.