Background: Cardiovascular medicine has undergone rapid changes in recent years, but there are insufficient reports using large cohorts regarding these changes for Japanese coronary artery disease (CAD) patients. Hence, a large-scale prospective observational study was needed.
Methods and results: A total of 36,298 patients were registered over 6 periods. Patients with hypertension, hyperlipidemia, obesity, and impaired glucose tolerance increased in number, while those with old myocardial infarction (MI), smoking habit, and family history of CAD decreased. Regarding the trends in interventional procedures, stent use increased in both the whole cohort and the acute MI subgroup, while the use of only medical control decreased. Regarding prescription trends, angiotensin-receptor blockers increased while nitrates decreased.
Conclusions: In a period of 3.5 years, significant changes were observed for both interventional procedures and medication, which might be related to the well-timed compliance of physicians with published evidence. However, these changes were not related to changes in the event rates, at least over the short term. Although careful attention should be paid in interpreting the results, because this is an observational study and the background of patients in each cohort might have been heterogeneous, such investigations should be constantly conducted for evidence-based practice.