Drug Allergy Alert System in a Spanish University Hospital: Description and Dynamics of Use.

INTRODUCTION: The drug allergy alert system reduces the frequency of adverse drug events, although it is subjected to collateral effects, since 80-90% of alerts are not real, and a large percentage of alerts are overridden (46.2-96.2%). We reviewed how the alert system is used at University Hospital Fundación Alcorcon (HUFA). METHODS: Data were obtained from the drug allergy alert and the alert overriding notification forms (both in the period 2011-20). We also recorded drug allergy diagnoses at HUFA, drug consumption in primary care in 2016. We calculated the incidence of drug allergy alert activation, temporal trends in use, and correlations between the number of drugs in several datasets. RESULTS: We collected 15,535 alerts. NSAIDs and penicillins were the drugs with the highest number of drug allergy alerts (36.55% and 26.91%, respectively). A correlation was found between the number of drug alerts and the type of drug allergy in HUFA in 2016. Only 6.83% of the alerts were removed, and, of these, 21.77% were reactivated. Approximately 100 overrides were recorded per year from 2016 (6.8% of 8,434 activated alerts during 2014-2020). CONCLUSIONS: The number of drug allergy alerts recorded via the drug allergy alert system of HUFA correlates with the distribution of drug allergy diagnoses in the hospital, although many of the alerts could be false positives (as per current published evidence). We detected a very low frequency of removed alerts (6.83%), a relevant frequency of reactivations (one quarter), and a very low frequency of overrides (6.8%).

Asthma Control in Patients with Severe Eosinophilic Asthma Treated with Reslizumab: Spanish Real-Life Data.

BACKGROUND: Reslizumab is an anti-interleukin 5 monoclonal antibody that has demonstrated to reduce the risk of severe exacerbations and to improve symptoms, lung function, and quality of life in randomized controlled trials that included patients with severe eosinophilic uncontrolled asthma (SEUA) and a history of severe exacerbations. OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of add-on reslizumab in a cohort of patients with SEUA under real-life conditions. METHODS: This was a multi-centre, retrospective, real-life study that included subjects with SEUA treated with reslizumab in 44 asthma units throughout Spain. Eligible patients were those who had received at least one dose of reslizumab as part of normal clinical practice. The primary endpoint was complete asthma control at 52 weeks, defined as absence of severe exacerbations, ACT ≥20 and no maintenance oral corticosteroids (OCS). Demographic, clinical, and functional data were collected at baseline (T0), after four to six months (T1); after 12 months (T2) and beyond 12 months of therapy (T3). RESULTS: Treatment with reslizumab achieved complete asthma control in 40% of the 208 included SEUA patients and led to a significant reduction in exacerbations (from 3.0; IQR: 2.0-4.0 at V0 to 0.0; IQR: 0.0-0.0 at V2), maintenance OCS use (from 54.8% (95% CI: 48.0-61.6 at T0 to 18.5% (95% CI: 12.5-24.5 at T2) and a meaningful improvement in symptoms in the entire treated population: ACT increased from 12.8 ± 4.5 at V0 to 20.0 ± 5.1 at V2 (p < 0.001). Most of the improvement achieved at 12 months was obtained at 4-6 months. The retention (continuation) rate of reslizumab was 75% through 2 years (95CI%: 1.9-2.1). Overall, reslizumab showed an adequate safety profile. CONCLUSION: Reslizumab is an effective therapy for SEUA with adequate safety profile in real-life conditions.

Impact of Penicillin Allergy Label on Length of Stay and Mortality in Hospitalized Patients through a Clinical Administrative National Dataset.

BACKGROUND: Penicillin allergy is a common problem in the management of infectious diseases. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of penicillin allergy on length of hospital stay (LOHS) among hospitalized adult patients and on in-hospital mortality at a national level. METHODS: A retrospective cohort study of adult patients discharged from the Spanish Hospital System between 2006 and 2015 was conducted using the Minimum Basic Data Set (MBDS). We compared LOHS and in-hospital mortality of adult patients whose records contained penicillin allergy code V14.0 (International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification) as a secondary diagnosis, with a random sample without such a code. RESULTS: We identified 981,291 admissions with code V14.0, which corresponded to 2.63% of all hospitalizations. Adults patients with a penicillin allergy label were significantly older than patients without such a label, with a median of 70 years (interquartile range [IQR]: 51-80) versus 63 years (IQR: 40-77). The proportion of women and the prevalence of infectious diseases were higher in the group with a penicillin allergy label (61.40% vs. 53.84%; 34.04% vs. 30.01%; respectively). We found a higher median Elixhauser-Van Walraven score in hospitalized patients with an allergy label. The median LOHS for hospitalizations with a penicillin allergy label (5 [IQR: 2-9]) was significantly longer than that in those without such a label (4 [IQR: 2-9]). Multivariate analysis showed an increase in LOHS due to the penicillin allergy label (odds ratio [OR] [95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.061 [1.057-1.065]) and a decrease in mortality in penicillin allergy records (OR [95% CI]: 0.834 [0.825-0.844]). CONCLUSION: In our study, the prevalence of a penicillin allergy label in hospitalized patients, using the MBDS, is low. Hospitalizations with an allergy label was associated with a longer LOHS. However, penicillin-allergic patients did not show higher mortality rates. Inaccurate reporting of penicillin allergies may have an impact on healthcare resources.

East-west gradient in hip fracture incidence in Spain: how much can we explain by following the pattern of risk factors?

Our objective was to analyze the incidence and trend of hip fracture in Spain and its distribution by Autonomous Community (AC). In Spain, the age-adjusted incidence rate of hip fracture is decreasing. There is great variability in the incidence and tendency of hip fracture among the different ACs. Genetic, demographic, and climatic factors and cohort effect factors of the civil war explain 96% of this variability. INTRODUCTION: In Spain, there is great variability between the different Autonomous Communities (ACs) in the incidence of hip fracture. The objectives of our study are (1) to estimate the incidence rate and trend of hospital admissions for hip fracture in Spain and by ACs and (2) to analyze risk factors/markers that could explain the variability in the incidence and trend between different ACs. METHOD: This work includes 2 studies (TREND-HIP and VAR-HIP). TREND-HIP: retrospective, national, observational study based on the administrative database of the National Health System that includes a Minimum Basic Data Set (MBDS) of hospital admissions. VAR-HIP: ecological study based on the analysis of the results obtained in TREND-HIP study, with different risk factors/markers obtained from different sources. RESULTS: In the 17 years included in the analysis, there were 744,848 patients diagnosed with hip fracture. The global age-adjusted rate of hip fracture at the national level was 315.38/100,000 person*year (95% CI 312.36-317.45); by AC, the rate varied from 213.97 in the Canary Islands to 363.13 in the Valencia and Cataluña communities. We observe an east-west gradient in Spain. The trend for both sexes was - 0.67% (95% CI 0.9990-0.9957) (p < 0.001). In the analysis of risk factors/markers that explain this distribution, we found significant correlations with genetic factors, demographics, climatic factors and the time a region was on the Republican side of the civil war. The linear regression model that includes the factors that show significant correlation explains 96% of the variability observed. CONCLUSION: In Spain, the age-adjusted incidence rate for hip fracture is decreasing. There is a great variability in the incidence and tendency of hip fracture among the different ACs. Genetic, demographic, climatic factors and the cohort effect of the civil war explain 96% of this variability.

Predicting of anaphylaxis in big data EMR by exploring machine learning approaches.

Anaphylaxis is a life-threatening allergic reaction that occurs suddenly after contact with an allergen. Epidemiological studies about anaphylaxis are very important in planning and evaluating new strategies that prevent this reaction, but also in providing a guide to the treatment of patients who have just suffered an anaphylactic reaction. Electronic Medical Records (EMR) are one of the most effective and richest sources for the epidemiology of anaphylaxis, because they provide a low-cost way of accessing rich longitudinal data on large populations. However, a negative aspect is that researchers have to manually review a huge amount of information, which is a very costly and highly time consuming task. Therefore, our goal is to explore different machine learning techniques to process Big Data EMR, lessening the needed efforts for performing epidemiological studies about anaphylaxis. In particular, we aim to study the incidence of anaphylaxis by the automatic classification of EMR. To do this, we employ the most widely used and efficient classifiers in text classification and compare different document representations, which range from well-known methods such as Bag Of Words (BoW) to more recent ones based on word embedding models, such as a simple average of word embeddings or a bag of centroids of word embeddings. Because the identification of anaphylaxis cases in EMR is a class-imbalanced problem (less than 1% describe anaphylaxis cases), we employ a novel undersampling technique based on clustering to balance our dataset. In addition to classical machine learning algorithms, we also use a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to classify our dataset. In general, experiments show that the most classifiers and representations are effective (F1 above 90%). Logistic Regression, Linear SVM, Multilayer Perceptron and Random Forest achieve an F1 around 95%, however linear methods have considerably lower training times. CNN provides slightly better performance (F1 = 95.6%).

La anafilaxia en urgencias: reflexiones desde la Alergología / Anaphylaxis in the emergency department: reflections from the medical specialty of allergy and clinical immunology

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Development of a disease-specific quality of life questionnaire for adult patients with hereditary angioedema due to C1 inhibitor deficiency (HAE-QoL): Spanish multi-centre research project.

BACKGROUND: There is a need for a disease-specific instrument for assessing health-related quality of life in adults with hereditary angioedema due to C1 inhibitor deficiency, a rare, disabling and life-threatening disease. In this paper we report the protocol for the development and validation of a specific questionnaire, with details on the results of the process of item generation, domain selection, and the expert and patient rating phase. METHODS/DESIGN: Semi-structured interviews were completed by 45 patients with hereditary angioedema and 8 experts from 8 regions in Spain. A qualitative content analysis of the responses was carried out. Issues raised by respondents were grouped into categories. Content analysis identified 240 different responses, which were grouped into 10 conceptual domains. Sixty- four items were generated. A total of 8 experts and 16 patients assessed the items for clarity, relevance to the disease, and correct dimension assignment. The preliminary version of the specific health-related quality of life questionnaire for hereditary angioedema (HAE-QoL v 1.1) contained 44 items grouped into 9 domains. DISCUSSION: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first multi-centre research project that aims to develop a specific health-related quality of life questionnaire for adult patients with hereditary angioedema due to C1 inhibitor deficiency. A preliminary version of the specific HAE-QoL questionnaire was obtained. The qualitative analysis of interviews together with the expert and patient rating phase helped to ensure content validity. A pilot study will be performed to assess the psychometric properties of the questionnaire and to decide on the final version.