A Prospective Observational Study to Assess Medication Adherence and Health Related Quality of Life in Chronic Kidney Disease Patients in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Abstract

Chronic Kidney Disease(CKD) patients belong to the group of subjects with large burden of daily pill intake. Failure of adherence to these medications can lead to increased morbidity, mortality, cost, and burden on health care system. Therefore, good medication adherence is important to obtain desired therapeutic outcome which in turn improves the quality of life.
 The objective of this study is to assess medication adherence and health related quality of life in CKD patients.
 A prospective observational study was conducted for 6 months at Indiana Hospital and Heart Institute, Mangalore. Total 100 participants diagnosed with CKD were enrolled for the study. Permission from the Ethical Committee was taken and informed consent was obtained from the study subjects before initiating the study. Demographic, clinical and treatment details were collected in a specially designed data collection forms. Patient’s adherence to the medication was assessed with the help of Brief Medication Questionnaire (BMQ) and patient’s quality of life was assessed using Kidney Disease Quality of Life Short Form (KDQOL-SF). The data was expressed using descriptive statistics and analyzed using Chi square test, Mann Whitney test, and Spearman Correlation Statistics.
 Out of 100 patients enrolled in the study, 63 were male and 37 were female. The average number of medicines taken in a day by each patient was 10. 12% of the study population was completely adherent to the drug therapy. BMQ had 3 domains in which 39% of the patients were adherent and 61% were non adherent to the Regimen screen, 68% were adherent and 32% were non adherent to the Belief screen, and 31% were adherent and 69% were non adherent to the Recall screen. High cost of medicine (69%), Complex dosing schedule (68%), and Unaware about seriousness of condition or use of medicine (63%) were most common reasons for Non-adherence. Using KDQOL questionnaire, mean scores for Dialysis staff encouragement (96.25±9.31) and Quality of social interaction (87.86±17.48) were high whereas Physical role (4.75±16.92) and Emotional role (13.03±31.44) were found to be low.
 These results indicate that non adherence to medications leads to deteriorating quality of life and high therapeutic complexity.