Novel family-focused intervention improves medication adherence in heart failure patients

FamLit, a multicomponent, family-focused, literacy-sensitive education intervention, effectively improves medication adherence among heart failure (HF) patients, a recent study has found.

Researchers randomly assigned 43 HF patients and their care partners to receive either the FamLit intervention (n=23; mean age, 65±12 years; 52 percent female) or an attention control (n=20; mean age, 67±9 years; 30 percent female). Adherence was measured after 3 months using the Medication Event Monitoring System.

Participants who received the FamLit intervention showed better medication adherence at 3 months than their attention control counterparts (87.6 percent vs 80.9 percent). This effect persisted until the 6-month follow-up (87.8 percent vs 74 percent). Self-reported medication adherence at baseline was comparable between the two groups (p=0.35).

Repeated-measures analysis of variance revealed a significant interaction between adherence and time (P=0.03), suggesting that while adherence improved in the intervention group, it deteriorated in the controls.

Adherence was then taken as a dichotomized variable, such that those with adherence rates ≥80 percent were defined as adherent, while the rest were categorized as nonadherent.

After 3 months, 78 percent of participants in the FamLit intervention group were categorized as adherent, as opposed to only 60 percent of the attention controls. The between-group difference was not statistically significant (p=0.21). Moreover, the proportion of adherent participants grew further in the intervention group but remained stagnant in the control arm (83 percent vs 60 percent; p=0.11).