Question

1. Discuss factors that make a patient more or less compliant with glaucoma treatment plans with your peers.
2. What factor(s) do you feel is/are most common? Is there one?

Answer 1

Many studies demonstrated that glucoma patients are less adhered to the treatment regimen.

The most common factor influence poor adherence level is, the the form of medication. The use of eye drops may be complicated as compared to oral medication. If the client is aged, the self administration of eye drops is more challenging. The self administration requirs good hand eye coordination, good eye sight, good coordination, expertise in holding the medication etc.

If the patient is aged, he may be taking other systemic medications for diabetes, hypertension etc along with glucoma medications. Various medications may confuse the dose, route, frequency of opthalmic medications.

The other factors which causes poor adherence are forgetfulness due to ageing, negligence, emotional instability, lack of knowledge about the importance of medication etc.