Patient factors and compliance with asthma therapy.

Compliance by patients to prescribed treatment regimens can be considered as the interface between effective therapy and effective disease management. Compliance can be affected by the nature of the relationship between the practitioner and the patient, and their attitudes towards each other. It has also been suggested that practitioner behaviour can influence patient behaviour and health status. However, each individual patient is influenced in his or her attitudes, and reactions to disease and its management, by a wide variety of patient-related factors. These include psychological variables such as mood, beliefs, and the knowledge, motivation and ability of the patient. Social factors may also play a role: these include age, marital and socioeconomic status and level of education. Results from a range of studies in patients with pulmonary or other diseases show that the psychosocial determinants of compliance are only poorly understood, and suggest that compliance cannot be predicted from patients' health status and that social factors are weak indicators only. Furthermore, it appears from available data that patients' beliefs about health issues are not as useful as indicators of likely compliance as was previously believed.