Trial reportBMC family practice2021
Baseline characteristics and comparability of older multimorbid patients with polypharmacy and general practitioners participating in a randomized controlled primary care trial.
Trial report in BMC family practice, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT03724539 (Optimizing PharmacoTherapy In the Multimorbid Elderly in Primary CAre), which is not on this map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Optimizing PharmacoTherapy In the Multimorbid Elderly in Primary CAre: a Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial (the OPTICA Trial)
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Differences in Older Patients' Attitudes Toward Deprescribing at Contextual and Individual Level.Frontiers in public health · 2022Pooled it
- Trial
- Optimising prescribing in older adults with multimorbidity and polypharmacy in primary care (OPTICA): cluster randomised clinical trial.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2023Trial
- Postprandial 2-h glucose tolerance is associated with diabetes diagnosis, diabetes mortality, and cardiovascular mortality.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Using electronic health records to understand multimorbidity in older people: a scoping review.European geriatric medicine · 2025Article
- Developing and testing a framework for coding general practitioners' free-text diagnoses in electronic medical records - a reliability study for generating training data in natural language processing.BMC primary care · 2024Article
- Postprandial Plasma Glucose between 4 and 7.9 h May Be a Potential Diagnostic Marker for Diabetes.Biomedicines · 2024Article
- Fasting Triglycerides in the Upper Normal Range Are Independently Associated with an Increased Risk of Diabetes Mortality in a Large Representative US Population.Journal of cardiovascular development and disease · 2024Article
- Homeostasis Model Assessment for Insulin Resistance Mediates the Positive Association of Triglycerides with Diabetes.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- A mixed methods analysis of the medication review intervention centered around the use of the 'Systematic Tool to Reduce Inappropriate Prescribing' Assistant (STRIPA) in Swiss primary care practices.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- Postprandial Plasma Glucose Measured from Blood Taken between 4 and 7.9 h Is Positively Associated with Mortality from Hypertension and Cardiovascular Disease.Journal of cardiovascular development and disease · 2024Article
- Understanding older patients' willingness to have medications deprescribed in primary care: a protocol for a cross-sectional survey study in nine European countries.BMC geriatrics · 2022Article
- The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the continuity of care for at-risk patients in Swiss primary care settings: A mixed-methods study.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Article
- Swiss GPs' preferences for antidepressant treatment in mild depression: vignette-based quantitative analysis.BMC family practice · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesRecruiting general practitioners (GPs) and their multimorbid older patients for trials is challenging for multiple reasons (e.g., high workload, limited mobility). The comparability of study participants is important for interpreting study findings. This manuscript describes the baseline characteristics of GPs and patients participating in the 'Optimizing PharmacoTherapy in older multimorbid adults In primary CAre' (OPTICA) trial, a study of optimization of pharmacotherapy for multimorbid older adults. The overall aim of this study was to determine if the GPs and patients participating in the OPTICA trial are comparable to the real-world population in Swiss primary care.
designAnalysis of baseline data from GPs and patients in the OPTICA trial and a reference cohort from the FIRE ('Family medicine ICPC Research using Electronic medical records') project.
settingPrimary care, Switzerland.
participantsThree hundred twenty-three multimorbid (≥ 3 chronic conditions) patients with polypharmacy (≥ 5 regular medications) aged ≥ 65 years and 43 GPs recruited for the OPTICA trial were compared to 22,907 older multimorbid patients with polypharmacy and 227 GPs from the FIRE database.
methodsWe compared the characteristics of GPs and patients participating in the OPTICA trial with other GPs and other older multimorbid adults with polypharmacy in the FIRE database. We described the baseline willingness to have medications deprescribed of the patients participating in the OPTICA trial using the revised Patients' Attitudes Towards Deprescribing (rPATD) questionnaire.
resultsThe GPs in the FIRE project and OPTICA were similar in terms of sociodemographic characteristics and their work as a GP (e.g. aged in their fifties, ≥ 10 years of experience, ≥ 60% are self-employed, ≥ 80% work in a group practice). The median age of patients in the OPTICA trial was 77 years and 45% of trial participants were women. Patients participating in the OPTICA trial and patients in the FIRE database were comparable in terms of age, certain clinical characteristics (e.g. systolic blood pressure, body mass index) and health services use (e.g. selected lab and vital data measurements). More than 80% of older multimorbid patients reported to be willing to stop ≥ 1 of their medications if their doctor said that this would be possible.
conclusionThe characteristics of patients and GPs recruited into the OPTICA trial are relatively comparable to characteristics of a real-world Swiss population, which indicates that recruiting a generalizable patient sample is possible in the primary care setting. Multimorbid patients in the OPTICA trial reported a high willingness to have medications deprescribed.
trial registrationClinicaltrials.gov ( NCT03724539 ), KOFAM (Swiss national portal) ( SNCTP000003060 ), Universal Trial Number (U1111-1226-8013).
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.