Introduction: Psoriasis is a prevalent disorder of the skin which presents with scaly, red plaques and leads to significant morbidity and mortality. Thus, successful treatment is of great importance to the patient and provider.
Objective: Nonetheless, a significant cause of treatment failure may not be incorrect diagnosis or treatment, but rather nonadherence. We aimed to elucidate what factors influence adherence to psoriasis treatments.
Methods: We conducted a review on the literature on adherence by adapting search terms derived from an existing systematic review (SR) on psoriasis adherence. Only data relevant to patients with psoriasis were extracted, including the type of medications they were using, when available. All of the factors associated with adherence were grouped by medication type and whether they had positive, negative, or no association with adherence, or mixed evidence.
Results: We found a unifying theme across SR was the wide heterogeneity in methodology of primary studies. There are pearls to be gleaned from this review, such as the power of a well‐written prescription, shared decision‐making, using effective treatments, having frequent follow‐up, and reframing adverse effects to improve adherence.
Conclusion: There is widespread prevalence of both mixed and contradicting conclusions across the SR, which may stem from the fact that studies on adherence vary extensively in their definition of adherence, their method for evaluating it, and their patient populations.