Therapeutic inertia in anti-platelet therapy in patients with a cardiovascular event attended in an emergency department

Objective As very few studies have assessed therapeutic inertia (TI) in anti-platelet therapy in patients in secondary cardiovascular prevention, the authors designed a study in their hospital emergency department to quantify its magnitude and its associated factors. Methods This descriptive cross-sectional observational study involved a sample of 223 patients with a history of cardiovascular disease and recommendation for anti-platelet therapy who attended the emergency department in a Spanish region in 2016. The main variable was TI in platelet anti-aggregation (lack of a prescription when recommended by the clinical guidelines). The secondary variables were gender, age, educational level, stable partner, hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes, smoking, type and number of cardiovascular events, blood pressure, and glomerular filtration rate. The magnitude of TI was quantified and associated factors were studied using a binary logistic regression model. Results TI was present in 107 patients (48.0%). In the multifactorial analysis, the following factors were associated with a higher proportion of TI: female gender (p = .021), higher cultural level (p = .020), and having no previous diagnosis of hypertension (p = .003) or dyslipidemia (p = .002). Conclusions The magnitude of TI in anti-platelet therapy in patients who had already suffered a cardiovascular event was very high. TI was associated with being a woman, having a high cultural level, and not being diagnosed with hypertension or dyslipidemia. More studies are needed to corroborate these results to take the appropriate measures to reduce TI.