Elderly Adherence to the Medication Regimen and Risk of Falls in the Community
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Abstract
Introduction: Population aging is a global and national reality that poses new health challenges. The occurrence of falls is directly related to multifactorial, intrinsic, and extrinsic circumstances, such as the use of medication, several times mentioned by the authors, as being a preponderant major risk factor for falls in the elderly people. However, adherence to therapy can also be considered as protective factor against falls.
Background: Analyze individual’s adherence to the treatment regimen and correlate that adherence with the confidence level of elderly.
Goals: to identify adherence to the medication regimen and the risk of falls among the elderly in the community; to analyze the association between adherence to the medication regimen and the risk of falls among the elderly in the community.
Material and Methods: Cross-sectional, descriptive-correlational, and quantitative study, with a non-probabilistic sample by connivance of 127 elderly people enrolled in the Day Care Centers of a Municipality in the Autonomous Region of Madeira. The Treatment Adherence Measurement Scale (MAT) and the Risk of Falls Scale (ERQ) were used. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics using SPSS.
Results and Discussion: Of the elderly studied, 86,6% were female, with a mean age of 74,23+/-7,9 years, and 73.2% belonged to the lower middle social class. They take an average of 6,81 +/-4.43 pills per day and have a high rate of adherence to the medication regimen with an average of 37,7+/-4,3 on the MAT (12-42). They have a low risk of falling, associated with high confidence, with an average of 78+/-18,7 on the ERQ (12-100), with the median number of falls in the last year being 0. There was no correlation between MAT and ERQ (rho=0.03; p=0.740), and a weak, non-statistically significant correlation between the number of pills taken and the number of falls (rho=0.114; p=0.206).
Conclusion: The elderly adheres to the prescribed medication and have a low risk of falling, and it is not possible to identify a significant association between them. We suggest other studies to better understand these phenomena and provide better health care to this vulnerable population.
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