Medications adherence and associated factors among patients with stroke in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Background: Stroke is one of the most significant neurological problems around the world, and is considered a leading cause of death. Due to polypharmacand multimorbidity, stroke patients are susceptible to have lower levels of adherence to their medications and self-care activities. Methods: Patients whhave suffered a stroke and had recently been admitted to public hospital were approached for recruitment. Patients’ adherence to their medications waexamined using a validated questionnaire during an interview between the principal investigator and the patients, where patients’ adherence to their selcare activities was assessed using a developed, validated and previously published questionnaire as well. Reasons for lack of adherence was explored from the patients. Verification of patient’s details and medications was done via the patient’s hospital file. Results: The mean age of the participants (n=173was 53.21 (SD= 8.61) years. Assessing patients’ adherence to medications showed that more than half of them stated that they sometimes/often forgoto take their medication/s, while 41.0% sometimes/often stopped their medication/s from time to time. The mean adherence to medications score (ouof 28) was 18.39 (SD=2.1), with 83.8% having a low adherence level. It is found that patients who did not take their medications were due to forgetfulnes(46.8%) and complications from taking the medications (20.2%). Better adherence was associated with higher educational level, higher number of medicaconditions, and higher frequency of glucose monitoring. Adherence to self-care activities showed that majority of patients performed correct self-caractivities three times a week. Conclusion: Post-stroke patients in Saudi Arabia have indicated low levels of medication adherence, while reporting gooadherence to their self-care activities. Better adherence was associated with certain patient characteristics such as higher educational level. These findingcan help in focusing the efforts to improve adherence and health outcomes for stroke patients in the future.