@article {Troeung855, author = {Lakkhina Troeung and Diane Arnold-Reed and Wendy Chan She Ping-Delfos and Gerald F Watts and Jing Pang and Marija Lugonja and Max Bulsara and David Mortley and Matthew James and Tom Brett}, title = {A new electronic screening tool for identifying risk of familial hypercholesterolaemia in general practice}, volume = {102}, number = {11}, pages = {855--861}, year = {2016}, doi = {10.1136/heartjnl-2015-308824}, publisher = {BMJ Publishing Group Ltd}, abstract = {Objective To evaluate the performance of a new electronic screening tool (TARB-Ex) in detecting general practice patients at potential risk of familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH).Methods Medical records for all active patients seen between 2012 and 2014 (n=3708) at a large general practice in Perth, Western Australia were retrospectively screened for potential FH risk using TARB-Ex. Electronic extracts of medical records for patients identified with potential FH risk (defined as Dutch Lipid Clinic Network Criteria (DLCNC) score >=5) through TARB-Ex were reviewed by a general practitioner (GP) and lipid specialist. High-risk patients were recalled for clinical assessment to determine phenotypic FH diagnosis. Performance was evaluated against a manual record review by a GP in the subset of 360 patients with high blood cholesterol (cholesterol >=7 mmol/L or low-density lipoprotein cholesterol >=4.0 mmol/L).Results Thirty-two patients with DLCNC score >=5 were identified through electronic screening compared with 22 through GP manual review. Sensitivity was 95.5\% (95\% CI 77.2\% to 99.9\%), specificity was 96.7\% (95\% CI 94.3\% to 98.3\%), negative predictive accuracy was 99.7\% (95\% CI 98.3\% to 100\%) and positive predictive accuracy was 65.6\% (95\% CI 46.9\% to 8\%). Electronic screening was completed in 10 min compared with 60 h for GP manual review. 10 of 32 patients (31\%) were considered high risk and recalled for clinical assessment. Six of seven patients (86\%) who attended clinical assessment were diagnosed with phenotypic FH on examination.Conclusions TARB-Ex screening is a time-effective and cost-effective method of systematically identifying potential FH risk patients from general practice records for clinical follow-up.}, issn = {1355-6037}, URL = {https://heart.bmj.com/content/102/11/855}, eprint = {https://heart.bmj.com/content/102/11/855.full.pdf}, journal = {Heart} }