Outpatient compliance with theophylline and phenytoin therapy.
Poor compliance with prescribed medication is a significant problem in chronic disease states and is often responsible for the apparent failure of therapy. The determinants and extent of non-compliance are commonly incorrectly perceived by doctors. During routine therapeutic drug monitoring of epileptic and asthmatic outpatients at a local day hospital, non-compliance was identified as a significant problem. A compliance study was conducted on 80 epileptic and asthmatic patients to determine the nature and extent of this problem. Non-compliance was measured using four different methods, which were then compared using chi 2 tests. Overall incidence of non-compliance was found to be 63%. Age, sex, standard of education and duration of disease were found to have no association with non-compliance. The most clinically significant finding was that almost half the patients were unaware of the necessity of taking their medication on a continuous basis. No significant differences existed between assessing non-compliance using tablet counts, patient interview and clinic attendance, whereas the method using blood levels gave significantly different results from all the other methods used.
Dowse
R
R
School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Rhodes University, Grahamstown.
Futter
W T
WT
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001249:Asthma / Q000188:drug therapy; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000188:drug therapy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010045:Outpatients; D010349:Patient Compliance; D010672:Phenytoin / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D013806:Theophylline / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D016312:Treatment Refusal
D010672:Phenytoin; D013806:Theophylline