TY  - JOUR
A1  - Viniol, Annika
A1  - Ploner, Tina
A1  - Hickstein, Lennart
A1  - Haasenritter, Jörg
A1  - Klein, Karl Martin
A1  - Walker, Jochen
A1  - Donner-Banzhoff, Norbert
A1  - Becker, Annette
T1  - Prescribing practice of pregabalin/gabapentin in pain therapy : an evaluation of German claim data
T2  - BMJ open
N2  - Objectives: To analyse the prevalence and incidence of pregabalin and gabapentin (P/G) prescriptions, typical therapeutic uses of P/G with special attention to pain-related diagnoses and discontinuation rates.
Design: Secondary data analysis.
Setting: Primary and secondary care in Germany.
Participants: Four million patients in the years 2009–2015 (anonymous health insurance data).
Intervention: None.
Primary and secondary outcome measures: P/G prescribing rates, P/G prescribing rates associated with pain therapy, analysis of pain-related diagnoses leading to new P/G prescriptions and the discontinuation rate of P/G.
Results: In 2015, 1.6% of insured persons received P/G prescriptions. Among the patients with pain first treated with P/G, as few as 25.7% were diagnosed with a typical neuropathic pain disorder. The remaining 74.3% had either not received a diagnosis of neuropathic pain or showed a neuropathic component that was pathophysiologically conceivable but did not support the prescription of P/G. High discontinuation rates were observed (85%). Among the patients who had discontinued the drug, 61.1% did not receive follow-up prescriptions within 2 years.
Conclusion: The results show that P/G is widely prescribed in cases of chronic pain irrespective of neuropathic pain diagnoses. The high discontinuation rate indicates a lack of therapeutic benefits and/or the occurrence of adverse effects.
KW  - diabetic neuropathy
KW  - pain management
KW  - primary care
Y1  - 2019
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/50025
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-500259
SN  - 2044-6055
N1  - This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
VL  - 9
IS  - 3, e021535
SP  - 1
EP  - 6
PB  - BMJ Publishing Group
CY  - London
ER  -