• CMAJ open · Jul 2016

    Using Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network data to examine depression in patients with a diagnosis of Parkinson disease: a retrospective cohort study.

    • Kimberly Rose P Singian, Morgan Price, Vicky Bungay, and Sabrina T Wong.
    • School of Nursing (Singian, Bungay, Wong), Department of Family Practice (Price, Wong) and Centre for Health Services and Policy Research (Wong), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC.
    • CMAJ Open. 2016 Jul 1; 4 (3): E417-E423.

    BackgroundParkinson disease is a complex neurodegenerative disorder, and a comorbidity of depression is common. We aimed to describe demographic and health characteristics of patients with Parkinson disease and examine sex differences in antidepressant prescriptions for those with comorbid depression using electronic medical records.MethodsWe analyzed Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network data for patients 18 years and older with a diagnosis of Parkinson disease who had at least 1 primary care encounter between Sep. 30, 2012, and Sep. 30, 2014. We used regression modelling to determine sex differences in antidepressant prescriptions. An advisory group of clinicians helped determine the common list of medications and interpreted the results.ResultsWe identified a total of 1815 patients (54.9% male) with Parkinson disease during the study period. The mean age of patients was 74.6 years. Most (82.0%) lived in urban areas. Patients had a mean number of 15.5 primary care encouters over the 2-year study period. Almost 40% of patients had a concurrent diagnosis of depression. More than half of the patients had received a depression diagnosis within 1 year of their Parkinson diagnosis. Eight out of every 10 patients had a prescription for at least 1 medication for depression, the most frequently prescribed being selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). No sex differences were found in the number or type of medications.InterpretationOur findings support Canadian Parkinson Guidelines for Routine Screening of Comorbid Depression, but more evidence and decision-support tools are needed to examine the efficacy of antidepressants and assist clinicians in evaluating the frequent SSRI prescriptions in this population.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…