The database of Italian general practitioners allows a reliable determination of the prevalence of myocardial infarction.
BACKGROUND
To plan preventive intervention after myocardial infarction (MI) the disease prevalence and the age and time from acute event of the index population should be known.


METHODS
We identified all the living patients with MI coded diagnosis in the database of the Italian College of General Practitioners (Health Search Database-HSD). The years from the first acute MI were also determined.


RESULTS
3588 subjects with MI diagnosis were identified (2698 males and 888 females, for 2 gender not recorded). Based on the distribution of our population and on that reported by the Italian Institute of Statistics, stratified by gender and age (segments of 10 years), the estimated number of subjects with MI in Italy (age-standardized rates x 10000) was 309284 for men and 102343 for women.


CONCLUSIONS
The prevalence of MI diagnosis in the HSD is very close to that obtained by other epidemiological methods. Querying the database can provide a simple and inexpensive way to estimate and monitor the prevalence of MI in Italy.
Filippi
Alessandro
A
Italian College of General Practitioners, Florence, Italy.
Vanuzzo
Diego
D
Bignamini
Angelo A
AA
Mazzaglia
Giampiero
G
Cricelli
Claudio
C
Catapano
Alberico L
AL
D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D000368:Aged; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005194:Family Practice / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009203:Myocardial Infarction / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D010821:Physicians, Family; D015995:Prevalence; D012042:Registries; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018570:Risk Assessment; D017678:Sex Distribution; D016019:Survival Analysis