Did I Take My Medicine or Not?

A
persistent problem in the medical community is that many patients fail
to follow the instructions on their prescriptions. They often miss
dosages, or forget they have taken their medicine and double dose. Sometimes
patients stop taking their medicine after they start to feel better or
because it has unpleasant side effects.

This often happens to the Dowbrigade,
particularly with pharmaceutical narcotics,
which always seem to be gone a few hours after we fill the script.
Obviously, we are forgetting taking them, over and over again.

Apparently, the problem is most acute with elderly patients, who not
only get the best medicines, but get more of them than anyone else. Why
don’t patients take the medicine their doctors give them, even though
they know their life might depend on it?

To answer that questions, scientists at the University of Michigan set
up a study of heart attack and angina patients to find out
the most common reasons they don’t take their medicine. Guess what it
was. They forgot.

The study involved 154 patients who had suffered acute coronary syndromes
(heart attack or unstable angina episode) and were hospitalized at
the U-M Health System. The vast majority of them were taking some
or all of the "Fab Four" classes of drugs for heart patients:
anti-platelet medications such as aspirin, ACE inhibitors, beta blockers
and lipid-lowering, cholesterol-fighting statin drugs.

In all, 50.4 percent of the patients reported some level of non-adherence to
their medication regimen. More than 48 percent said they hadn’t stuck to their
statins, while 40 percent had trouble keeping up with their ACE inhibitors. Aspirin
and beta blocker non-adherence rates were also in the 40 percent range.

When asked why they didn’t keep up with their medication schedule, the patients’
top reason was that they had forgotten. Carelessness was second, followed by
a few patients who said they didn’t take some of their drugs when they felt
better – or
when they felt worse.

This is a big part of the reason scientists are so excited with the
new drug-dispensing chips which can be implanted inside a person’s body
and either pre-programed to release precise dosages at prescribed times,
or activated when needed by signals from outside.

Our only problem with this whole idea is that, at least in the case
of the Dowbrigade it would have to be a VERY BIG CHIP to contain a significant
portion of the pharmaceuticals we anticipate needing as we ease into
our senior years. Why, the threshold dosage of organic mescaline alone
is half a gram. We can foresee some serious implantation problems which
may eventually involve growing or implanting extra body parts just to
house the needed drug implants.

However we are confident that science will eventually solve these delivery
system problems. After all, if we can put two dune buggies on the surface
of Mars, we can certainly figure out how to shrink 128 different drugs
to fit on a microchip and then implant it in the Dowbrigade. Another miracle
of modern medicine.

from Eureka Alert