Profiling Inhalation Medication in COPD patients (PRIME)

Study type

• Study type:
  Non-interventional study
• Scope of the study:
  Other
• If ‘other’, further details on the scope of the study:
  Medication prescription

Non-interventional study

• Non-interventional study design:
  Other
• Non-interventional study design, other:
  Retrospective cross sectional

Study drug and medical condition

• Medical condition to be studied:
  Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Population studied

• Age groups:
  Adults (18 to < 46 years)

  Adults (46 to < 65 years)

  Adults (65 to < 75 years)

  Adults (75 to < 85 years)

  Adults (85 years and over)
• Estimated number of subjects:
  3544

Study design details

• Main study objective:
  This study aims to describe the key patient characteristics that guided pulmonologists’ prescription of inhalation medication in primary care COPD patients, using decision tree modelling.
• Outcomes:
  A decision tree which provides insight into the patient characteristics that guide pulmonologist in the prescription of inhalation medication to COPD patients and can be used to support GPs in daily clinical practice.
• Data analysis plan:
  Two types of decision trees will be generated, the decision trees will be developed using the exhaustive Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) method. The first will contain predictors transformed into categorical variables using optimal binning or the binning method in CHAID, before binning the variables are checked for associations with the dependent variable. The second tree will contain predictors transformed in categorical variables using binning as well, but also contains predictors who are split at their clinically relevant cut-offs.