Pateint adherence to treatment.

Adherence is defined according to WHO as "the extent to which a person's behavior - taking medication, following a diet, and / or executing lifestyle changes - corresponds with agreed recommendations from a health care provider." It can be evaluated by subjective or objective methods. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of patient adherence in chronic disease therapies, ways of assessing it, the factors that affect it, the consequences of nonadherence and interventions that can lead to its improvement. PubMed and Google Scholar bibliographic databases were searched for publications. Review articles on the subject in English and Greek and recently published were selected and studied. The factors that may affect adherence are defined as socio-economic, patient-related, disease-related, treatment-related, healthcare system-related. Non- adherence is deliberate/intentional and unintentional. The consequences of poor adherence are poor health and increased health care costs. Improvement of adherence is not achieved through individual interventions but with multidimensional targets that influence the key components of the therapeutic relationship: the patient, the health provider and external factors. Effective interventions are needed to improve adherence, coordinated action and collaboration between patients, carers and health providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]