Hypercholesterolaemia screening: Proposal for development of a new professional pharmaceutical service

Abstract

To determine the feasibility of the community pharmacist identifying new patients with hypercholesterolaemia (HC) through a screening program (PHI-CAPTCHA). The study begins with patients who attended any of four pharmacies in the town of Jovita (Argentina) to obtain their lipid-lowering medication between March 1 and April 30, 2017. The genealogical trees of the patients who agreed to participate were determined. Authorisation was requested to review the cholesterolaemia records of their relatives stored in the databases of the Jovita Clinical Analysis Laboratory (1997–2015). The hypothetical efficacy of PHI-CAPTCHA was determined as (i) the proportion of children confirmed to have HC, and (ii) the proportion of patients with at least one child with HC. One hundred and thirty-nine patients of the 274 patients who obtained their lipid-lowering drugs from any of the four pharmacies, met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Of the total number of patients' relatives, 532 had historical records of cholesterol readings and agreed to participate in the study. Thirty-five per cent of children (95/270) and 26% of grandchildren (69/262) presented with HC. Forty-eight per cent of patients had at least one child with HC. Of the 2nd generation patients of the service (original patient´s hypercholesterolaemic children), 35% of their children had HC and 50% had at least one child with this condition. A child’s probability of having high cholesterol was found to double when their father also had HC (OR = 2.08, 95%CI [1.19, 3.63]). The results of this study indicate screening services should be offered to all HC patients, regardless of the age of their children and grandchildren.