The role of information for improvement of patients' treatment in Bulgaria.

PURPOSE This issue is an attempt to assess patients' role as regards their compliance, respectively their non-compliance. The authors try to elucidate the factors concerning the patient-physician interrelation and patient-pharmacist interrelation that influence the non-compliance in order to increase the compliance rate. METHODS Standard individual questionnaires and interviews were developed and applied to study an attitude to compliance and non-compliance among different categories of patients, suffering from chronic diseases. RESULTS The obtained results show that the main reasons, influencing the patients' non-adherence to physicians' advise are: the high price of the drugs, the overburdened daily regimen, negligence, distrust towards the treatment and others. The insufficient information in the patient's leaflet together with the inappropriate drug form appears to be the main factors that cause non-compliance. This happens especially in the cases, when the patients are treated with more than one drug in different drug forms and particularly it concerns elderly people. Even though the compliance among the patients investigated was comparatively high (50% to 92%), possibility for improvement still exists if the treatment that have to be initiated could be individualised. Thus the level of compliance will be improved and increased. DISCUSSION The results from the data analysis show a great variation in the level of compliance among the chronic patients in Bulgaria. It ranges from 50 to 92%, depending on the type of the chronic disease and on the age of the patients. This fact shows the necessity for improvement of the different factors that has to begin as soon as possible.