Compliance with therapy for ulcer disease: clinical experience and review of the literature

As a factor favoring relapses, noncompliance is particularly crucial to the treatment of peptic ulcer disease, and greater efforts should be made to eliminate or reduce it. To investigate the reasons for noncompliance, we performed two clinical trials involving a total of 592 patients with duodenal ulcer treated with various H 2 antagonists for 12 months. In the first study, 40.3% of patients with uncomplicated duodenal ulcer were noncompliant, compared with only 4.6% who had had previous bleeding episodes. Compliance in the second study averaged 68%. Major reasons for noncompliance among these patients were an absence of symptoms and an inconvenient dosage schedule. On the basis of our clinical experience and a review of the literature, compliance appears to be higher in patients with previous complications of their disease and when the effectiveness of prescribed drugs does not depend on ingestion with the evening meal.