Elliott WJ
Influence of socioeconomic factors in maintaining enrollment in
a tertiary hypertension clinic
11th Scientific Meeting, American Society of Hypertension
Am J Hypert
(Apr) 9:170A 1996
Regardless of what medicine is used to treat hypertension, it won't be
effective if not taken. A
common idea is, that poor, poorly educated patients, are less compliant than
their more well-to-do,
educated counterparts.
Elliott studied this question at a medical center where the patient mix is
quite varied. 2800
patients were studied who attended a hypertension clinic. Over a 7 year
period, there were 1200
patients who for various seemingly inappropriate reasons, failed to return to
clinic after 3
consecutive telephone calls and letters. Dropouts vs. non dropouts were
compared. Age, race,
gender, education level, and presence/absence of private insurance, in fact,
nothing, was able to
separate dropouts from non-dropouts. The results suggest that more work
needs to be done to address
this problem.
Comment: The weakness of this study is, that no follow-up was done to
document that the 40%
of patients who "dropped out" actually did so, although considerable effort
was made to exclude
patients who went to other physicians, moved out of the area, etc. It seems
that non-compliance is
a human trait that is present widely in many socioeconomic groups. This
appears to be a very
fruitful area for further investigation. (John T. Daugirdas, M.D.,
University of Illinois at
Chicago)
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11th Scientific Meeting, American Society of Hypertension
H: Drug therapy :
Compliance