Peek Behind the Paper: understanding the use of non-vitamin K oral anticoagulants in treating venous thromboembolism in England
Here, first author Sreeram Ramagopalan (Center for Observational Research and Data Sciences; CORDS, Uxbridge, UK) discusses a recent Future Cardiology paper which explores the changing face of venous thromboembolism management in England.
Please introduce yourself and your institution?
I am the Director of the Center for Observational Research and Data Sciences (CORDS; Uxbridge, UK) at Bristol-Myers Squibb (NY, USA). I hold a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Oxford, as well as an MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (both UK).
What inspired this short communication?
There is a need to understand how newer medicines are being used in the real-world to treat venous thromboembolism management (VTE).
Was patient-reported data available for this dataset? How could its inclusion affected results?
No. It would be of significant interest to understand how patients feel about receiving newer treatments.
In this study, you found that physicians were comfortable prescribing the alternative therapy. What lessons learned here could be applied to encouraging use of an alternate therapy in the future?
I’m not sure if there are any specific lessons to be learned about encouraging therapy use but it is good to see that changes in management guidelines has an impact on clinical practice hopefully leading to better outcomes for patients.
This study dealt with UK data. How do UK datasets differ to US datasets?
UK data obviously reflects UK clinical practice and availability of medicines. In the US data is much more readily available given the insurance nature of healthcare.