title: The database of Italian general practitioners allows a reliable determination of the prevalence of myocardial infarction.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Italian College of General Practitioners, Florence, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Filippi
authors.forename: Diego
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Vanuzzo
authors.forename: Angelo A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Bignamini
authors.forename: Giampiero
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mazzaglia
authors.forename: Claudio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cricelli
authors.forename: Alberico L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Catapano
mesh_terms: 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