Study: Patients Quit Treatments Too Soon
Daily Breeze - Sep. 26, 2006
CHICAGO — Many patients stop taking their medicine far sooner than they should, researchers say, and that decision can be deadly when the drugs treat heart disease or diabetes.
It took only one month after leaving the hospital for 1 in 8 heart attack patients to quit taking the lifesaving drugs prescribed to them, a study of 1,521 patients found.
"One month is very surprising," said study co-author Dr. Michael Ho of the Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
The heart patients who stopped taking three proven drugs — aspirin, beta blockers and statins — were three times more likely to die during the next year than patients who stayed on the pills.
The study didn't examine why people stopped taking their medicine, but the patients who quit were more likely to be older, single and less educated.
The study of heart patients appears in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine. The issue features a group of studies on patients who stopped taking their medications.
One of the studies reviewed medical records of 11,532 diabetes patients. It found that those who didn't take their drugs — hypoglycemics, blood pressure drugs and statins — had higher rates of hospitalization and death.
The research suggests that patients and their doctors must work harder, said Dr. Patrick O'Connor of HealthPartners Research Foundation in Minneapolis, who wrote an editorial in the journal.
"Patients need to ask, 'What are the most important medicines in my treatment, the ones that will help me live long enough to see my grandchildren grow up?' " O'Connor said.Questions
Some of the questions the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality recommends asking about new medication:
- What is the name of the medicine?
- What is it supposed to do?
- Is it OK to substitute a less-expensive generic drug for the name brand? Will it achieve the same effect?
Source: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's "Quick Tips When Getting a Prescription"
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