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Editorials

Identifying people with diabetes at high risk of blindness and amputation

BMJ 2015; 351 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h5643 (Published 11 November 2015) Cite this as: BMJ 2015;351:h5643
  1. Azeem Majeed, professor of primary care1,
  2. Mariam Molokhia, clinical reader in epidemiology and primary care2
  1. 1Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London, London W6 8RP, UK
  2. 2Department of Primary Care and Public Health Sciences, King’s College London, London SE1 3QD, UK
  1. Correspondence to: A Majeed a.majeed{at}imperial.ac.uk

A new risk tool will help to personalise care and advice and to target resources at those in greatest need

Blindness and lower limb amputations are among the most feared complications of diabetes. Despite the frequency of these complications and their effect on patients, methods of identifying those patients with diabetes who are at greatest risk of blindness and amputation have been lacking. This gap has now been filled in a study by Julia Hippisley-Cox and Carol Coupland (doi:10.1136/bmj.h5441), using data from QResearch, a large clinical database derived from the electronic patient records used by general practices in the United Kingdom.1

The study used data derived from electronic patient records of around 455 000 people with diabetes from 763 general practices in England. The same data source (QResearch) and statistical methods used in this study have also been used to produce other risk measurement tools—for example, QRISK, which has now been adopted by the NHS in England for measuring the risk of developing cardiovascular disease.2 The data from primary care records were linked to other data sources such as NHS Hospital Episode Statistics. The authors …

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