Circulatory Health magazine

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A healthy lifestyle is usually the best way of living to a ripe old age in one piece. Some people must take medication to prevent cardiovascular diseases in addition to living a healthy lifestyle. But for whom are they useful? 46 Circulatory Health Magazine
U-Prevent Smart website about customized medication internist in training Jannick Dorresteijn and Professor in vascular medicine Frank Visseren In the event of cardiovascular disease or a risk of cardiovascular disease, treatment comprises of not only adopting a healthy lifestyle, but also anticoagulants, anti-hypertensives and cholesterol-lowering products. Internist and professor in vascular medicine Frank Visseren and internist in training Jannick Dorresteijn treat patients in the outpatient clinic. "We know from large-scale studies that they are very effective and safe medicines," says Jannick. "But the medication is fitted for the average patient and does not work as effectively for everyone." Old-fashioned According to Frank, even though we are living in 2018, we are still practicing very old-fashioned medicine. "Just imagine," he says. "A large-scale study shows that a patient group gets 30% less cardiovascular disease when using a certain medicine. That's an average figure, based on the results of tens of thousands of patients. We then prescribe this medication for the entire patient population. Because we don't know in advance who will benefit from it and who won't. We also don't yet recognize the patients for whom it would be useful to lower blood pressure and cholesterol to below the target values. And that's a shame, because you'd want to intensify treatment for this group." U-Prevent "We must do better," Frank and Jannick thought about nine years ago. The result is U-Prevent, a smart website that calculates exactly how much an individual patient will benefit from medication to prevent cardiovascular diseases. To create the website, they analyzed data from various large-scale international research cohorts and trials. Frank: "We use our Utrecht SMART cohort and work together with researchers in the Netherlands and abroad. We now have access to data from more than a million patients, for whom all kinds of measurements have been performed for these studies. We also know how they did over five or ten years' time. And that's a veritable treasure trove of information." Calculation models Together with professor Yolanda van der Graaf of the UMC Utrecht Julius Center, they made several algorithms of these enormous quantities of individual data, using a heavy-duty computer. These algorithms constitute arithmetical models that can be used in practice. Jannick: "We converted these into an attractive and practical application that healthcare professionals can use as soon as they consider prescribing preventive medication. They can use it to predict and show the effect of the medicine for this individual patient: "If you take this medication, you will > Circulatory Health Magazine 47
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Page 29 and 30: Elective programs for students Juli
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Page 33 and 34: Forty-kilometer tandem ride for res
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Page 51 and 52: Colophon Publication 2018 PUBLISHED

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