Older patients who have suffered a heart attack often don t bother to take medication that could potentially save their lives, a new eyebrow-raising study has found.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, looked at 9,500 Medicare beneficiaries who had survived a heart attack. Within a month of leaving the hospital, only about half of patients filled prescriptions for medications such as blood pressure pills, beta-blockers, statins or clopidogrel (Plavix).
It s amazing that compliance is so low, says ACSH s Ruth Kava. I mean, noncompliance within a month of leaving the hospital is astounding.
You d think a heart attack would be a real wake up call, agrees Dr. Ross.
Reasons for the noncompliance could include failure of the physician to emphasize the importance of the drugs, the cost of co-payments, side effects, and just plain old patient inertia: the feeling that nothing s really that wrong to make me have to keep taking all these expensive pills.
