Friday's 5 Quotes for Primary Care 6-9-2023

Each of the quotes that follow is taken from a study reviewed on Patient Care® during the past week and was chosen for the research team’s passion about the clinical implications of their findings and for their potential impact on primary care practice.

Despite major advances in cardiovascular and stroke treatment over the past 2 decades, millions of patients currently remain untreated or undertreated due to the risk of bleeding, but for whom thrombotic events could be prevented. If successful, milvexian could open the door to treat an entirely new set of patients who are currently overlooked due to bleeding risk. Proposed indications for the investigational factor XIa inhibitor are: stroke prevention after acute ischemic stroke or high-risk transient ischemic attack; recent acute coronary syndrome; and atrial fibrillation.

The first thing I want all primary care physicians to know is that long COVID-associated neurologic symptoms are common. Muscle pain, tremors, numbness and tingling, sleep disorders, loss of taste and smell are just a few. This really is not over and it's unfortunately something that we as a medical community are going to keep working on for years to come.

I would urge primary care clinicians to learn more about RSV in older persons and have them remember that those patients you tested last year and the year before for flu, and the test came out negative? Well, I'll bet many of those patients had RSV. And now they can be protected. How will primary care respond to another new vaccine? That remains to be seen, but certainly delivering three vaccines to an older population is going to be a challenge this fall.

The findings suggest that improving adherence to guideline-based therapies for the prevention of adverse cardiovascular outcomes warrants policy-level interventions to reduce prescription copayment. Even among those with health insurance, the variability of co-payment was associated with reduced medication adherence, which may be even more pronounced among those who are underinsured or uninsured.

Compounded versions of semaglutide, often sold online, may contain salt versions of the molecule (ie, semglutide sodium, semaglutide acetate) that are not evaluated by the FDA for safety or efficacy and are not identical to the active ingredient in approved semaglutide entities. “We are not aware of any basis for compounding a drug using these semaglutide salts that would meet federal law requirements that limit the types of active ingredients that can be used in compounding.”