Testosterone deficiency syndrome and cardiovascular health: An assessment of beliefs, knowledge and practice of general practitioners and cardiologists in Victoria, BC
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Testosterone deficiency syndrome (TDS) has been shown to be an independent cardiovascular risk factor and a predisposing factor for metabolic syndrome. As general practitioners and cardiologists primarily care for these patients, we sought to assess their knowledge, beliefs and practice patterns with respect to TDS and cardiac health. METHODS: We distributed a questionnaire to all 20 cardiologists and a cohort of 128 family practitioners in Victoria, British Columbia. Of the 13 questions, 10 assessed knowledge and beliefs on TDS and 3 assessed current practice patterns. RESULTS: Most respondents believed that TDS is a medical condition (66.7%) and could negatively affect body composition (62%), but a similar majority was unsure whether it was a cardiac risk factor (66.7%). While most believed that testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) could improve exercise tolerance (62%), most were unsure if it was beneficial in cardiac patients. Cardiologists were significantly less likely to believe that TRT was beneficial in preventing recurrent myocardial infarction and improving myocardial perfusion (p = 0.0133, 0.00186, respectively). The vast majority (88%) did not screen cardiac patients for TDS. If a patient was identified as having TDS, only10% of those surveyed would refer these patients to a urologist. CONCLUSION: Despite its prevalence in cardiac patients, TDS is not well-understood by general practitioners and cardiologists; they lack knowledge on its deleterious cardiovascular effects. In their role as men's health advocates, urologists should educate our colleagues regarding the correlation between TDS and cardiovascular mortality and risk factors. Limitations of this study include small sample size and restricted geographic scope.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".