Validation of The Health Improvement Network (THIN) primary care database for monitoring prescriptions for smoking cessation medications.
OBJECTIVE
Evaluation of tobacco policy requires high quality and timely data on smoking cessation behaviour in the general population and in relevant target groups. Electronic primary care databases have the potential to provide a valuable source of data due to their size and continuity, and the availability of demographic and socioeconomic data. We therefore sought to investigate whether The Health Improvement Network (THIN) prescribing data are complete and can therefore be used to monitor trends in the prescribing of smoking cessation medications.


METHODS
The THIN smoking cessation medication prescriptions data for England were compared with smoking cessation medication dispensing data from NHS Prescription Services for January 2004 to December 2005.


RESULTS
Throughout the period the rates of prescribing and dispensing were very similar, both for nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) and bupropion combined, and for each type of medication alone. For NRT, dispensing exceeded recorded GP prescribing by 5.5% during the study period. For bupropion, prescribing exceeded dispensing by 5%.


CONCLUSIONS
THIN prescribing and national dispensing data are highly comparable. THIN prescribing data could potentially be used to monitor longitudinal trends in prescribing for smoking cessation medications.
UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies, The University of Nottingham, UK. tessa.langley@nottingham.ac.uk
Tessa E
TE
Langley
Lisa
L
Szatkowski
Jack
J
Gibson
Yue
Y
Huang
Ann
A
McNeill
Tim
T
Coleman
Sarah
S
Lewis
D016642:Bupropion / Q000627:therapeutic use; D016208:Databases, Factual / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D018765:Dopamine Uptake Inhibitors / Q000627:therapeutic use; D004739:England; D006801:Humans; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D009538:Nicotine / Q000627:therapeutic use; D018722:Nicotinic Agonists / Q000627:therapeutic use; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000379:methods*; D006113:United Kingdom
D018765:Dopamine Uptake Inhibitors; D018722:Nicotinic Agonists; D016642:Bupropion; D009538:Nicotine