Effectiveness of the protocols on cardiovascular risks in the Basque Country

To find the effectiveness of clinical protocols in detecting and monitoring the most important cardiovascular risk factors: tobacco dependency, high blood pressure, hyperlipaemia and diabetes mellitus. Cross-sectional descriptive study. Primary care centres in the Basque Country. 1485 clinical histories of users aged between 40 and 75 who had attended for consultation over the previous two years, registered with general practitioners in the Basque Country who normally use clinical histories. A questionnaire was sent to the people in charge of the 103 hierarchically organised centres requesting information on the use of protocols to detect and monitor the problems studied, and copies of protocols were requested. 77 centres (76%) replied and 66 sent 170 protocols. 990 clinical histories of doctors who used the four protocols and 495 of doctors who used none were analysed. These clinical histories belonged to lists of 45 doctors from 22 centres, chosen at random and stratified by whether their centre is registered with the PAPPS (preventive programme) or is a family and community medicine teaching centre. The centres using protocols were better at detecting tobacco dependency (24.6% vs 11.9%--p < 0.0005), hyperlipaemia (61.8% vs 53.1%--p < 0.001) and diabetes mellitus (75% vs 66.1%--p < 0.0005). The difference was less in the case of high blood pressure: 56.8% vs 52.1% (p = 0.097). No differences in quality in the monitoring of these problems were found. The use of cardiovascular risk protocols by primary care centres is related to an improvement in the quality of cardiovascular risk detection, although not of its control.