A telemonitoring program, via mobile phone messages, appears to be useful for improving the risk profile in ACS survivors and can be an effective tool for secondary prevention, especially for overweight patients.

BackgroundChronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is frequent and often coexists with other diseases. The aim of this study was to quantify the prevalence of COPD and related chronic comorbidity among patients aged over 40 years visiting family practices in an area of Madrid.MethodsAn observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted in a health area of the Madrid Autonomous Region (Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid). The practice population totalled 198,670 persons attended by 129 Family Physicians (FPs), and the study population was made up of persons over the age of 40 years drawn from this practice population. Patients were deemed to have COPD if this diagnosis appeared on their clinical histories. Prevalence of COPD; prevalence of a further 25 chronic diseases in patients with COPD; and standardised prevalence ratios, were calculated.ResultsPrevalence of COPD in family medicine was 3.2% (95% CI 3.0–3.3) overall, 5.3% among men and 1.4% among women; 90% of patients presented with comorbidity, with a mean of 4 ± 2.04 chronic diseases per patient, with the most prevalent related diseases being arterial hypertension (52%), disorders of lipid metabolism (34%), obesity (25%), diabetes (20%) and arrhythmia (15%). After controlling for age and sex, the observed prevalence of the following ten chronic diseases was higher than expected: heart failure; chronic liver disease; asthma; generalised artherosclerosis; osteoporosis; ischaemic heart disease; thyroid disease; anxiety/depression; arrhythmia; and obesity.ConclusionsPatients with COPD, who are frequent in family practice, have a complex profile and pose a clinical and organisational challenge to FPs.

IntroductionHealthcare management is oriented toward single diseases, yet multimorbidity is nevertheless the rule and there is a tendency for certain diseases to occur in clusters. This study sought to identify comorbidity patterns in patients with chronic diseases, by reference to number of comorbidities, age and sex, in a population receiving medical care from 129 general practitioners in Spain, in 2007.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in a health-area setting of the Madrid Autonomous Region (Comunidad Autónoma), covering a population of 198,670 individuals aged over 14 years. Multiple correspondences were analyzed to identify the clustering patterns of the conditions targeted.ResultsForty-two percent (95% confidence interval [CI]: 41.8–42.2) of the registered population had at least one chronic condition. In all, 24.5% (95% CI: 24.3–24.6) of the population presented with multimorbidity.In the correspondence analysis, 98.3% of the total information was accounted for by three dimensions. The following four, age- and sex-related comorbidity patterns were identified: pattern B, showing a high comorbidity rate; pattern C, showing a low comorbidity rate; and two patterns, A and D, showing intermediate comorbidity rates.ConclusionsFour comorbidity patterns could be identified which grouped diseases as follows: one showing diseases with a high comorbidity burden; one showing diseases with a low comorbidity burden; and two showing diseases with an intermediate comorbidity burden.

The acceptable performance of the server has made it possible to include it as a middleware service in a platform for the out-of-hospital follow-up and monitoring of patients with chronic heart disease which, at the present time, supports pilot projects and clinical trials for the evaluation of eHealth services.