Relationships among illness perceptions, medication beliefs and medication adherence in primary angle closure glaucoma patients

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Objective: To investigate the relationships among illness perception, medication beliefs and medication adherence in primary angle closure glaucoma patients. Methods: It was a cross-sectional study. Morisky 8-item Medication Adherence Questionnaire Chinese Revised, the Brief Illness Perceptions Questionnaire, the Specific Section of the Beliefs about Medicine Questionnaire Chinese Revised were administered to 156 primary angle closure glaucoma patients from Tianjin Eye Hospital. Chi-square test was used to analyze the types of glaucoma, gender, prescription complexity, medicine schedule, other disease and course of disease between the group of adherence and non-adherence. Pearson correlation method was used to analyze the correlations among the illness perception, necessity belief, concerns belief and medication adherence. Structural equation model was used to analyze the mediational role of medication belief between illness perception and medication adherence. Results: In the 156 primary angle closure glaucoma patients being investigated, 37 male and 119 female, the average age was (61.3±8.3) years old. The medication adherence of patients was 83 (53.2%) , the medication non-adherence of patients was 73 (46.8%) . It was showed that prescription complexity and medicine schedule were significantly correlated with medicine adherence (χ(2)=13.64, 11.31; P<0.05); gender, other disease and course of disease were not correlated with medication adherence (χ(2)=1.02, 1.73, 6.08; P>0.05). The scores of illness perception were positively correlated with the necessity belief of medication scores, the scores of concerns belief (r=0.18、0.45, P<0.05), and were negatively associated with medication adherence (r=-0.22, P<0.01). The concerns belief of medication scores were negatively correlated with the medication adherence (r=-0.47, P<0.01). Concerns belief mediates the relationship between illness perception and medication adherence wholly (χ(2)/df=1.73, RMSEA=0.069, NNFI=0.98, CFI=0.98, IFI=0.98) . Conclusions: The types of medicines and the number of glaucoma medication used have a significant influence to the medication adherence in the patients with primary angle closure glaucoma. The patients with greater illness perception performed greater non-adherence can be explained by their higher concerns blief. (Chin J Ophthalmol, 2017, 53: 109-114).