A Medicare database review found that physician preferences increasingly outweighed patient characteristics as determinants of first-time prescriptions for COX-2 inhibitors

First-time COX-2 inhibitor prescribing was somewhat dependent on patient factors in the first quarter of marketing, but the proportional influence of physician preferences increased substantially over the following 2 years, raising the question of why physician factors and not patient risk factors influence COX-2 inhibitor prescribing.