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Usual Care

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine

  • 16 Accesses

Synonyms

Control group of a randomized trial; Usual care arm

Definition

Although the definition of usual care has not been standardized, it can include the routine care received by patients for prevention or treatment of diseases.

Description

In cardiology, the type of routine care can vary by disease type and severity, the practice in which the patient is seen, health care system, and individual physician. Major task forces such from the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association have published guidelines on the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of several cardiovascular diseases. These guidelines are based on expert opinion as well as on the strength of the evidence. The purpose of these guidelines is to ensure that these recommendations are disseminated to the practicing cardiology community, as the type and quality of diagnostic, preventive, and treatment strategies widely varies.

In randomized trials, there has been some debate about the advantages and...

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References and Further Reading

  • ALLHAT Officers and Coordinators for the ALLHAT Collaborative Research Group. (2002). Major outcomes in moderately hypercholesterolemic, hypertensive patients randomized to pravastatin vs usual care: The antihypertensive and lipid-lowering treatment to prevent heart attack trial (ALLHAT-LLT). Journal of the American Medical Association, 288, 2998–3007.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smelt, A. F., et al. (2010). How usual is usual care in pragmatic intervention studies in primary care? An overview of recent trials. British Journal of General Practice, 60(576), e305–e318.

    Article  Google Scholar 

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center of Behavioral Cardiovascular Health, Division of General Medicine, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Manjunath Harlapur

  2. Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Daichi Shimbo

Authors
  1. Manjunath Harlapur
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  2. Daichi Shimbo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Manjunath Harlapur .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Miami School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA

    Marc Gellman

Section Editor information

  1. School of Nursing, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Linda C. Baumann

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© 2019 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

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Cite this entry

Harlapur, M., Shimbo, D. (2019). Usual Care. In: Gellman, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_1297-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_1297-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-6439-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-6439-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference MedicineReference Module Medicine

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