Compliance with ocular therapy.

Patient noncompliance with the physician's prescribed therapeutic regimen can present serious obstacles both to individual patient care and to the obtaining of information necessary for controlled drug trials. Unfortunately, the physician often is unable to determine whether and to what extent a patient is not complying with therapy. This article reviews the problem of patient noncompliance with particular emphasis on how and why noncompliance occurs, and methods of predicting, detecting and coping with the defaulting patient.