• The more medicines a patient takes, the harder it is to keep their administration correct
• Compliance problems can prevent therapeutic goals from being reached
• Risk factors for poor compliance are the number of drugs taken and their frequency of administration
• Whether age itself is a risk factor is not clear
• As an illustration, in a study of patients with either diabetes or congestive heart failure,
  • among patients taking one drug, 15% made errors
  • those taking two or three drugs had a 25% error rate
  • while over 35% of those taking four or more drugs made errors

Copyright 1999 by the GEC