Chronic heart failure and adherence to medication: methods for assessing adherence to therapy and unresolved issues

Abstract

The review of the literature examines the General problems of treatment of chronic heart failure, among which special attention is paid to the problem of adherence. This problem remains one of the most urgent and difficult to solve in medicine, because it directly affects the effectiveness of treatment and the outcome of the disease. The article considers the commitment of both doctors to comply with clinical recommendations and patients to prescribed therapy. Some of the reasons that explain the lack of adherence to treatment (such as gender, age, institution where the patient is observed, and others) are described. It is also described that comorbidity is an aggravating factor in the treatment of chronic heart failure. It is described that comorbidity is an aggravating factor in the treatment of chronic heart failure. The presence of concomitant diseases increases the number of medications taken, which exacerbates the problem of adherence to medication therapy. It is noted that medical registry is the ideal model for studying adherence in clinical practice. The main Russian registers included of patients with chronic heart failure are considered. It is noted that in none of them a full assessment of patients’ adherence to therapy was carried out. In the largest foreign chronic heart failure registers, the assessment of commitment is also given insufficient attention. Separate clinical trials are described, including randomized trials, specifically studying various aspects of the problem of adherence and its impact on the course of the disease. Special attention is paid to the methods of assessing adherence in these studies. It is noted that there is no “gold standard” for its evaluation, and existing methods (such as Chips, determining the concentration of the drug in the blood, counting prescription forms and others) are unacceptable for real clinical practice. This indicates the need and prospects for further work on assessing adherence to therapy in patients with chronic heart failure.