Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Adherence to Antihypertensive Medications.

Importance: Nonadherence to antihypertensive medications is associated with uncontrolled blood pressure, higher mortality rates, and increased health care costs, and food insecurity is one of the modifiable medication nonadherence risk factors. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a social intervention program for addressing food insecurity, may help improve adherence to antihypertensive medications. Objective: To evaluate whether receipt of SNAP benefits can modify the consequences of food insecurity on nonadherence to antihypertensive medications. Design, Setting, and Participants: A retrospective cohort study design was used to assemble a cohort of antihypertensive medication users from the linked Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS)-National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) dataset for 2016 to 2017. The MEPS is a national longitudinal survey on verified self-reported prescribed medication use and health care access measures, and the NHIS is an annual cross-sectional survey of US households that collects comprehensive health information, health behavior, and sociodemographic data, including receipt of SNAP benefits. Receipt of SNAP benefits in the past 12 months and food insecurity status in the past 30 days were assessed through standard questionnaires during the study period. Data analysis was performed from March to December 2021. Exposure: Status of SNAP benefit receipt. Main Outcomes and Measures: The main outcome, nonadherence to antihypertensive medication refill adherence (MRA), was defined using the MEPS data as the total days' supply divided by 365 days for each antihypertensive medication class. Patients were considered nonadherent if their overall MRA was less than 80%. Food insecurity status in the 30 days prior to the survey was modeled as the effect modifier. Inverse probability of treatment (IPT) weighting was used to control for measured confounding effects of baseline covariates. A probit model was used, weighted by the product of the computed IPT weights and MEPS weights, to estimate the population average treatment effects (PATEs) of SNAP benefit receipt on nonadherence. A stratified analysis approach was used to assess for potential effect modification by food insecurity status. Results: This analysis involved 6692 antihypertensive medication users, of whom 1203 (12.8%) reported receiving SNAP benefits and 1338 (14.8%) were considered as food insecure. The mean (SD) age was 63.0 (13.3) years; 3632 (51.3%) of the participants were women and 3060 (45.7%) were men. Although SNAP was not associated with nonadherence to antihypertensive medications in the overall population, it was associated with a 13.6-percentage point reduction in nonadherence (PATE, -13.6 [95% CI, -25.0 to -2.3]) among the food-insecure subgroup but not among their food-secure counterparts. Conclusions and Relevance: This analysis of a national observational dataset suggests that patients with hypertension who receive SNAP benefits may be less likely to become nonadherent to antihypertensive medication, especially if they are experiencing food insecurity. Further examination of the role of SNAP as a potential intervention for preventing nonadherence to antihypertensive medications through prospectively designed interventional studies or natural experiment study designs is needed.

Application of an Innovative Data Mining Approach Towards Safe Polypharmacy Practice in Older Adults.

INTRODUCTION: Polypharmacy is common and is associated with higher risk of adverse drug event (ADE) among older adults. Knowledge on the ADE risk level of exposure to different drug combinations is critical for safe polypharmacy practice, while approaches for this type of knowledge discovery are limited. The objective of this study was to apply an innovative data mining approach to discover high-risk and alternative low-risk high-order drug combinations (e.g., three- and four-drug combinations). METHODS: A cohort of older adults (≥ 65 years) who visited an emergency department (ED) were identified from Medicare fee-for-service and MarketScan Medicare supplemental data. We used International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes to identify ADE cases potentially induced by anticoagulants, antidiabetic drugs, and opioids from ED visit records. We assessed drug exposure data during a 30-day window prior to the ED visit dates. We investigated relationships between exposure of drug combinations and ADEs under the case-control setting. We applied the mixture drug-count response model to identify high-order drug combinations associated with an increased risk of ADE. We conducted therapeutic class-based mining to reveal low-risk alternative drug combinations for high-order drug combinations associated with an increased risk of ADE. RESULTS: We investigated frequent high-order drug combinations from 8.4 million ED visit records (5.1 million from Medicare data and 3.3 million from MarketScan data). We identified 5213 high-order drug combinations associated with an increased risk of ADE by controlling the false discovery rate at 0.01. We identified 1904 high-order, high-risk drug combinations had potential low-risk alternative drug combinations, where each high-order, high-risk drug combination and its corresponding low-risk alternative drug combination(s) have similar therapeutic classes. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrated the application of a data mining technique to discover high-order drug combinations associated with an increased risk of ADE. We identified high-risk, high-order drug combinations often have low-risk alternative drug combinations in similar therapeutic classes.

[Ethical guidelines for medical decision-making during COVID-19 pandemic in Chile]. / Orientaciones éticas para la toma de decisiones médicas en el contexto de la pandemia de COVID-19 en Chile.

The catastrophic emergency experienced by many countries with the COVID-19 pandemic emphasized the importance of bioethics for decision-making, both at the public health (equitable and effective policies) and at the clinical level. At the clinical level, the issues are the fulfillment of medical care demand with adequate health care teams, infrastructure, and supplies, and to cover critical care demands that surpass the available resources. Therefore, ethically correct approaches are required for the allocation of life sustaining resources. There are recommendations for the allocating life support during disasters based on multiple considerations, including ethical ones. However, the ethical criteria of existing guidelines are variable. Ethical principles usually considered are saving the greatest number of lives, saving the greatest number of years of life and the principle of the life cycle or the goal to give each individual equal opportunity to live through the various phases of life. However, the centrality of the human being and the search for the common good should be considered. Knowledge of public perspectives and moral benchmarks on these issues is essential. A successful assignment effort will require everyone's trust and cooperation. Decision making should be planned and discussed in advance, since in-depth deliberation will be extremely complex during the disaster. Our goal is to help the health care teams to wisely allocate resources in shortage periods.

Orientaciones éticas para la toma de decisiones médicas en el contexto de la pandemia de COVID-19 en Chile / Ethical guidelines for medical decision-making during COVID-19 pandemic in Chile

The catastrophic emergency experienced by many countries with the COVID-19 pandemic emphasized the importance of bioethics for decision-making, both at the public health (equitable and effective policies) and at the clinical level. At the clinical level, the issues are the fulfillment of medical care demand with adequate health care teams, infrastructure, and supplies, and to cover critical care demands that surpass the available resources. Therefore, ethically correct approaches are required for the allocation of life sustaining resources. There are recommendations for the allocating life support during disasters based on multiple considerations, including ethical ones. However, the ethical criteria of existing guidelines are variable. Ethical principles usually considered are saving the greatest number of lives, saving the greatest number of years of life and the principle of the life cycle or the goal to give each individual equal opportunity to live through the various phases of life. However, the centrality of the human being and the search for the common good should be considered. Knowledge of public perspectives and moral benchmarks on these issues is essential. A successful assignment effort will require everyone's trust and cooperation. Decision making should be planned and discussed in advance, since in-depth deliberation will be extremely complex during the disaster. Our goal is to help the health care teams to wisely allocate resources in shortage periods.

Adaptación y validación de un cuestionario grupal sobre participación comunitaria en salud en la comuna de El Bosque, Santiago de Chile / Adaptation and validation of a group questionnaire on community health participation in el bosque municipality, Santiago, Chile

La participación comunitaria ha sido uno de los aspectos fundamentales en las políticas sanitarias en Chile desde 1990. Sin embargo, aun reconociéndose la importancia de la participación comunitaria en el trabajo de los equipos de salud, esta estrategia ha presentado dificultades en su implementación, derivadas tanto de aspectos prácticos como de problemas teóricos. La ausencia de definiciones conceptuales claras y compartidas acerca de la participación resulta en tensiones ideológicas y políticas que se expresan a su vez en una interpretación, aplicación y evaluación distinta de las actividades de participación. Así, se hace necesario desarrollar herramientas de evaluación de la participación que, utilizándose transversalmente, fortalezcan el trabajo de los equipos de salud, al mismo tiempo que promuevan el desarrollo teórico del área. Un instrumento de evaluación de la participación comunitaria, diseñado especialmente para ser utilizado en atención primaria de salud, lo constituye el Spidergram, o mapa en tela de araña, que incorpora la evaluación de cinco dimensiones del proceso participativo. El presente estudio tiene por objetivo adaptar y validar este instrumento en un contexto urbano en Chile. Se evaluó la validez del cuestionario grupal traducido al español basado en la revisión de la literatura, la aplicación del instrumento piloto y las discusiones sostenidas por parte del equipo de investigación. Este instrumento alcanzó un adecuado nivel de consistencia interna y de concordancia interobservador en la mayoría de las variables al ser aplicado por moderadores externos, permitiéndose su recomendación como herramienta de trabajo para los equipos de atención primaria de salud.

Community participation has been one of the fundamental aspects of Chilean health care policies since 1990. Though the importance of health care teams' community participation should be recognized, this strategy has nevertheless faced a number of obstacles during its implementation, due to practical and theoretical problems. The absence of a clear and common conceptual definition of community participation results in ideological and political tensions that are, in turn, expressed in different interpretations, applications, and assessments of participatory activities. Thus, it is necessary to develop methods for the assessment of community participation that can be used across the board, and which may allow health care workers to strengthen their work with local communities, while promoting theoretical advances in the area. One instrument for measuring community participation, especially designed to be used in primary health care settings, is the Spidergram, which includes the evaluation of 5 variables related to the participatory process. This study aims to adapt and validate this assessment method in an urban context in Chile. The validity of the instrument was assessed through a literature review, a pilot application of a version translated into Spanish, and multiple discussions within the multidisciplinary research team. This instrument achieved adequate internal consistency and inter-observer concordance in most variables when applied by external observers, supporting its recommendation as a valuable tool for primary health care workers.

Aspectos éticos de la ventilación mecánica domiciliaria / Ethical issues of home mechanical ventilation

La mortalidad infantil ha disminuido gracias a los cuidados intensivos neonatales y pediátricos, esto a su vez ha contribuido a la sobrevida de niños con secuelas graves y dependencias tecnológicas especiales. La ventilación mecánica se utiliza como medida de soporte vital, en un intento de mejorar constantes biológicas y la calidad de vida del paciente y su entorno familiar; sin embargo, no siempre se obtiene el resultado esperado y las cargas sicológicas, sociales y financieras constituyen procesos que requieren desarrollar evaluaciones en el dominio de la bioética. Los desafíos y dilemas clínicos al instaurar ventilación no invasiva (VNI) se diferencian según las patologías y sus pronósticos. La asistencia ventilatoria no invasiva (AVNI), en algunos pacientes, logrará una disminución franca del esfuerzo respiratorio consiguiendo mejorar el crecimiento y desarrollo del sistema pulmonar, permitiendo luego de un tiempo su suspensión o mantenerla en forma crónica estable. En otras situaciones con deterioro progresivo y/o otras co-morbilidades, desde la dimensión bioética puede ser controversial, el inicio, mantención y transición hacia estrategias de mayor complejidad. En este documento se revisan los aspectos éticos que deben ser considerados en la toma de decisión de brindar AVNI en niños con enfermedades crónicas, en la perspectiva de los nuevos desafíos terapéuticos posibles con tecnología aplicada.