BarcelonaBenzodiazepines such as Orfidal and Valium are a type of anxiolytic that are prescribed, above all, against insomnia and anxiety. They are widely used and, although it is advised that the duration of treatment does not exceed four weeks, the Department of Health warns that there is an excess of prescriptions in primary care centers (CAP). In fact, inappropriate use to treat anxiety has risen by 14%, according to data from the Health Quality and Assessment Agency of Catalonia (AQuAS). The Government criticizes itself and recognizes that the pharmacological treatments that are prescribed need to be better adjusted and that it is one of the areas where it has “more room for improvement”.
When these drugs are used for a long time, patients can develop dependence and addiction. For this reason, the director of the AQuAS, Sandra García Armesto, defended this Monday in an attention to the media that it is necessary to provide tools and information to the professionals to turn the situation around and not prescribe more drugs. These are data from the Results Center, which collects health indicators between 2017 and 2023. Together with the Minister of Health, Olga Pané, the director of AQuAS presented the figures to professionals this Monday in an event in the Auditorium ONCE, where he has also warned of an increase in multi-medicated patients and consumers of antipsychotic drugs.
García Armesto has also warned that CAPs also overprescribe lipid-lowering drugs, a type of medication that lowers blood lipids and is used to treat cardiovascular disease. The best known are statins, which are prescribed to lower cholesterol. In this case, the inappropriate use of these drugs by primary care has grown by 17.2% between 2022 and 2023 alone.
According to the same data, there are also aspects to improve in hospitals. Salud emphasizes the use of emergencies. According to the director of the AQuAS, there are visits that could be attended to in other resources and avoid the saturation of this hospital service. García Armesto specified that the referral of patients from hospitals to primary care emergency centers (CUAP) is 13.4%, while the Medical Emergencies System (SEM) has set as an objective that this percentage goes up to 30%.
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