TARB-Ex is a new FREE electronic screening tool for identifying risk of familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) in general practice, and available now in Bp Premier.
It was developed by Professor Tom Brett, Dr Lakkhina Troeung and colleagues at the General Practice and Primary Health Care Research Unit at the School of Medicine, The University of Notre Dame Australia, Fremantle, Western Australia.
TARB-Ex has been successfully trialled in different Practices Australia-wide and a validated assessment has been undertaken to compare its performance against a GP using a manual approach. A paper1 on TARB-Ex has been published in Heart: Troeung L, et al, titled, ‘A new electronic screening tool for identifying risk of familial hypercholesterolaemia in general practice’.
The extraction tool was used in the NHMRC Partnership Grant study (GNT 1142883) into improving the detection and management of familial hypercholesterolaemia in Australian general practice, involved 15 practices across Australia and was led by Professor Brett. Findings from the study have been accepted for publication in Heart Journal.2
TARB-Ex data extraction tool extracts routine clinical information from the practice electronic health records to derive a Dutch Lipid Score and identifies patients with potential high FH risk for clinical investigation. The extraction tool was developed using Structured Query Language (SQL) technology and written for Bp Premier clinical software.
The tool will isolate all patients seen at the practice over the past two years and who have blood lipids undertaken. You need to have the lipid level recorded to generate a Dutch Lipid Score. This will include patients currently or formerly on medications for lipid reduction and patients not on such medications.
TARB-Ex does not export any data from your health records.
After TARB-Ex data extraction, those patients with Dutch Lipid Scores generated can be prioritised from highest to lowest based on their Uncorrected Dutch Lipid scores. To do this, all patients with Corrected Dutch Lipid scores of 5 and above can be saved to Excel. The patient list can then be prioritised from highest to lowest. The best return for the reviewing GP or PN will be those with the highest Uncorrected scores.
Download this tool for free on our Bp Premier Downloads page here, scrolling down to the Utilities section.
References and related papers
1. Troeung L, Arnold-Reed D, Chan She Ping-Delfos W, Watts G F, Pang J, Lugonja M, Bulsara M, Mortley D, James M, Brett T (2016) A New Electronic Screening Tool for Identifying Risk of Familial Hypercholesterolaemia in General Practice. Heart. 25 February 2016. doi:10.1136/heartjnl-2015-308824
2. Brett T, Chan DC, Radford J, Heal C, Gill G, Hespe C, Vargas-Garcia C, Condon C, Sheil B, Li IW, Sullivan DR, Vickery AW, Pang J, Arnold-Reed DE, Watts GF. Improving detection and management of familial hypercholesterolaemia in Australia general practice. Heart 2021 (In press)
3. Brett T, Arnold-Reed D. Familial Hypercholesterolaemia – a guide for general practice. AJGP 2019; 48: 650-652.
4. Brett T, Qureshi N, Gidding S, Watts GF. Screening for familial hypercholesterolaemia in primary care: time for general practice to play its part. Atherosclerosis 2018; 277: 399-406. Doi.org:10.1016/j.atherosclerosis.2018.08.019
5. Watts GF, Sullivan D, Hare D, Kostner K, Horton A, Bell D, Brett T, Trent R, Poplawski N, Martin A, Srinivasan S, Justo R, Chow C, Pang J. Integrated Guidance for Enhancing the Care of Familial Hypercholesterolaemia in Australia. Heart, Lung and Circulation. 2020. Heart, Lung and Circulation 2020; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hlc.2020.09.943
6. Brett T, Radford J, Heal C, et al. Implications of new clinical practice guidance on familial hypercholesterolaemia for Australian general practitioners. Submitted AJGP 2021
7. Watts GF, Sullivan D, Hare D, Kostner K, Horton A, Bell D, Brett T, et al. Essentials of a new clinical practice guidance on familial hypercholesterolaemia for physicians. Internal Medicine Journal 2021 (In press)
8. Brett T, Radford J, Qureshi N, Pang J, Watts GW. Evolving worldwide guidelines on lipid management and implications for Australian general practice. AJGP 2021 (In press)
9. Martin AC, Hooper AJ, Norman R, Nguyen LT, Burnett JR, Bell D, Brett T, Garton-Smith J, Pang J, Nowak K, Watts GF. A pilot study of universal screening of children and child-parent cascade testing for familial hypercholesterolaemia in Australia. Submitted J Paeds and Child Health 2021.
10. Watts GF, Sullivan D, Hare D, Kostner K, Horton A, Bell D, Brett T, et al. Synopsis of Integrated Guidance for Enhancing the Care of Familial Hypercholestolaemia: an Australian perspective. Amer J Prev Cardiology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apc.2021.10051
11. Familial Hypercholesterolaemia and Cascade Testing in General Practice – Lessons from Covid-19. Garraghy E, Brett T, Watts GF, Heal C, Hespe C, Radford J. AJGP 2020; 49: 859-860
12. Pang J, Sullivan DR, Brett T, et al. Familial hypercholesterolaemia in 2020: a leading Tier 1 genomic application. Heart, Lung, Circulation 2019), https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.hlc.2019.12.002
13. Brett T. Case 2: Zehra has vague chest discomfort. Check: Genomics. 2019; 557: 11–16.
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