Does adherence to medical therapy improve long-term survival after myocardial infarction?
Jerry Avorn
Correspondence Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Suite 3030, 1620 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02120, USA
Email javorn@partners.org
This article has no abstract so we have provided the first paragraph of the full text.
It is difficult enough for the busy physician to keep up to date with the literature and make appropriate prescribing decisions. With time constraints and the pressure of other responsibilities, monitoring whether patients actually take the drugs prescribed occupies, at most, a small part of the subsequent clinical effort. The results of this attention deficit have been well-documented in the literature on medication compliance, also known as adherence, or persistence. There is good evidence that as much as half of the medication prescribed for the treatment and prevention of chronic illness goes untaken.1 Sometimes, neither the doctor nor the patient is at fault; in the US, if a prescription is unaffordable, it is not likely to be filled. All too often, though, once the correct regimen for a patient has been defined, physicians fail to ensure that the medication is being taken as directed.
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