Ashwini Priyadarshini Singh, Faiz Ahmad, Narayanan Subramanian, Vishnu Prasad, Mahesh N. K
BACKGROUND In adult epilepsy patients, nonadherence to treatment regimes has been found to be associated with high morbidity, raised mortality and higher health care costs. The present study was undertaken with an aim to evaluate the medication compliance among patients undergoing treatment for epilepsy and study the factors affecting medication compliance. MATERIALS AND METHODS The present study was carried out as a cross sectional study among 100 patients diagnosed with seizure disorders who are already on treatment for a period of at least six months. Drug noncompliance was studied with the help a self-reported questionnaire which was derived from the Brief Medication Questionnaire. The items in the questionnaire recorded information regarding: awareness of drug therapy in terms of dose, timings and name of the drugs, missed medication, factors affecting compliance, aids to compliance, frequency of drug default and relapse. All data was entered in Epidata and statistical analysis was done using the software SPSS version 22.0. Chi square test was applied to test for statistical significance in difference between proportions. A p value <0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS The study included 55 male patients and 45 female patients and their mean age was 31.3±17.27 years. Nearly 83% of respondents claimed that compliance would be better if number of pills is less. Off all patients 74% reported that they never missed a dose during the past seven days. No significant association was observed between age, gender, duration of illness and treatment adherence. CONCLUSION The gap between noncompliance and ideal drug therapy schedule needs to be addressed for adequate management of epilepsy patients. There is considerable noncompliance to drug therapy among epilepsy patients.
