The Influence of Informal Caregivers on Adherence in COPD Patients

Abstract

Caregivers, especially spouses, may improve adherence in COPD. Future interventions may target patients without caregivers to optimize COPD management.

The Use of Inhalation Therapy in the Management of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in the Community: A Review of Studies

“…These studies were mostly based in outpatient clinics (N=11) (Lenney et al, 2000;Hesselink et al, 2001;George et al, 2005;Khassawneh et al, 2008;De Moraes Souza et al, 2009;Rootmensen et al, 2010;Melani et al, 2011;Agh et al, 2011 ;Cecere et al, 2012;Huetsch et al, 2012;Khdour et al, 2012), and patients' home (N=5) (Melani et al, 2001;Barta et al, 2002;Boyter and Carter, 2005;George et al, 2006;Sestini et al, 2006). Others were based in community pharmacies (N=3) (Hämmerlein et al, 2011;Mehuys et al, 2010;Trivedi et al, 2012). Cross-sectional, observational study.…”

“…Most of these studies were conducted in Europe, especially the UK (N=6) (Lenney et al, 2000;Barta et al, 2002;Ho et al, 2004;Boyter and Carter, 2005;Wilson et al, 2007;Khdour et al, 2012), followed by Italy (N=3) (Melani et al, 2001;Sestini et al, 2006;Melani et al, 2011), and the Netherlands (N=1) (Rootmensen et al, 2010), Belgium (N=1) (Mehuys et al, 2010), Hungary (N=1) (Agh et al, 2011), France (N=1) (Hesselink et al, 2001), Germany (N=1) (Hämmerlein et al, 2011), the USA (N=3) (Cecere et al, 2012;Huetsch et al, 2012;Trivedi et al, 2012), Australia (N=2) (George et al, 2005;George et al, 2006), Brazil (N=1) (De Moraes Souza et al, 2009) and Jordan (N=1) (Khassawneh et al, 2008).…”

“…Except for six studies which were conducted on a large national scale (Molimard et al, 2003;George et al, 2006;Wilson et al, 2007;Cecere et al, 2012;Rootmensen et al, 2010;Trivedi et al, 2012), and two were survey studies (Barta et al, 2002;Boyter and Carter, 2005). The sample size in these studies ranged from 28 to 2,730 COPD patients (George et al, 2006;Huetsch et al, 2012).…”

“…The majority of studies that has investigated medication use (adherence) among COPD patients have employed quantitative approaches (N=10) (Melani et al, 2001;Barta et al, 2002;Boyter and Carter, 2005;George et al, 2005;Mehuys et al, 2010;Agh et al, 2011;Cecere et al, 2012;Huetsch et al, 2012;Khdour et al, 2012;Trivedi et al, 2012), by measuring the amount of medicine taken over a given time period. There is a paucity of qualitative studies (N=1) that have investigated patients' medication use or adherence to their COPD medications; they have done so by considering variables such as adherence decisions which were influenced by patients' beliefs about inhalation therapies and concerns of side effects (George et al, 2006 There are a number of ways to measure adherence among patients with COPD.…”

“…Other studies used prescription refill rate by reference to pharmacy records of dispensed prescription or manual recording of collected prescriptions (Mehuys et al, 2010;Cecere et al, 2012;Huetsch et al, 2012;Trivedi et al, 2012). Two studies were by means of postal questionnaires (Barta et al, 2002;Boyter and Carter, 2005), which were filled by patients.…”