Heart attack patients do not take prescribed drugs consistently after surviving myocardial infarctions, according to a new study.
Out of 7,425 patients, only 2,150 of them took all of their prescribed drugs after a heart attack. Research shows that patients often misunderstood the role of medications while others feared side effects or avoided the financial burden of medication.
Author Dr. Robin Mathews, from Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, explained:
“Ultimately, regardless of the reason, patient non-adherence to medications after a heart attack has been associated with poor outcomes – these can include repeat hospitalization, progression of their underlying disease, or even reduced survival.”
Mathews and colleagues tracked patients from 216 hospitals in the country between April 2010 and May 2012 who had suffered myocardial infarctions. During that two-year period, heart attack patients had percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and were prescribed antiplatelet therapy. Six weeks into the study, 71 percent of the participants were still taking their prescribed medications, while 25 percent reported occasional use and four percent reported rare usage of drugs.
Many patients cited forgetfulness, but a remarkable 20 percent did not even tell their doctors that they had stopped taking medication after their heart attacks.
Unfortunately, those patients who lacked proper medication after a heart attack were likely to die or have a relapse, but the study could not make a correlation great enough during the study. Some heart attack results were concluded to be by chance.
The researchers did not use the data from patients who died within the six weeks of their heart attacks. This opens up the possibility that early medication non-compliance is an issue that is not often reported or tracked. The study depended on patients being honest about their medication treatments.
“There’s a lot going on in the days following a heart attack and often times the discussions about why each medication is important gets diluted by all of the other issues occurring in the hospital at the same time,” added Steven Baroletti, director of pharmacy at MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, Massachusetts.
Brand-name drugs and insurance issues also contribute to non-compliance. However, it is unclear why patients would stop taking life-saving drug treatment after their heart attacks.
Dr. Ian Kronish, a researcher from the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, believes that there are psychological factors to consider in heart attack treatment. If a patient is depressed or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder following their heart attack, it could lead to this peculiar behavior of not taking the proper medications.
“For these patients, the very medicines that can best reduce their chances of another heart attack may serve as unwanted reminders of the heart attack, and may lead some patients to skip their medications,” Kronish said.
Not all heart attack survivors are the same, and the goal is to continue exploring optimal treatment for all patients.
Inquisitr recently reported on the various differences between men and women heart attack patients. In those studies, it is women who seem less likely to identify their symptoms in a timely manner. There are also new technological developments in the works to detect heart attack signs earlier and more effectively, which could also lead to improvements in treatment.
(Photo courtesy of FoxNews)
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