Statins are rarely prescribed for incidentally discovered covert cerebrovascular disease: a retrospective cohort in a large electronic health record (EHR) identified using natural language processing.

Introduction: While incidentally discovered covert cerebrovascular diseases (id-CCD) are associated with future stroke, it is not known if patients with id-CCD are prescribed statins.

Methods: Patients age ≥50 with id-CCD on neuroimaging from 2009 to 2019 with no prior ischaemic stroke, transient ischaemic attack or dementia were identified using natural language processing in a large real-world cohort. Robust Poisson multivariable regression was used to assess statin prescription among patients without prior statins.

Results: Among 2 41 050 patients, 74 975 patients (31.1%; 4.7% with covert brain infarcts (CBI); 29.0% with white matter disease (WMD)) had id-CCD. 53.5% (95% CI 53.2 to 53.9%) were not on statins within 6 months prior to the scan. Of those, 12.0% (95% CI 11.7 to 12.3%) were prescribed statins in the next 6 months compared with 9.3% (95% CI 9.1 to 9.4%) in those without CCD, a 2.7% (95% CI 2.4 to 3.1%) absolute increase in statin prescription for those with id-CCD. In adjusted analyses, the presence of id-CCD was only associated with minor increases in statin prescription (CBI or WMD (risk ratio (RR) 1.09, 95% CI 1.05 to 1.13), CBI alone (RR 1.34, 95% CI 1.21 to 1.47), WMD alone (RR 1.05, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.09), and CBI and WMD (RR 1.23, 95% CI 1.12 to 1.35)).

Discussion: Identification of id-CCD is not associated with substantial changes in statin prescription in routine clinical practice.