Avaliação da adesão ao tratamento com alfadornase em pacientes com fibrose cística

Abstract

Cystic Fibrosis is an inherited disease, clinically manifested by digestive and respiratory symptoms. The early diagnosis offers the possibility of a better therapeutic control of the disease’s symptoms in favor of the prognosis and contributing to increasing quality of life. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the patient's behavior towards the disease and to evaluate the adherence to the treatment with the alfadornase enzyme. A cross-sectional study was carried out using epidemiological data collected through direct interviews with patients and/or their caregivers and by medical records analysis. Morisky-Green and Batalla Martinez tests were employed in order to evaluate the patient’s adhesion and knowledge of the disease, respectively. In addition, the clinical profile was assayed by Shwachman-Kulczyki score. Fifty-one (51) patients with cystic fibrosis in treatment with alfadornase were recruited at the outpatient clinic of the Hospital Universitário João de Barros Barreto. At final, forty-seven (47) patients participated in the study. Most of the patients (53.2%) were under 18 years of age, male (56.6%) and were from countryside (40.4%). Patients with long term use of alfadornase (> 5 years) show possess greater adherence than the others with a shorter treatment period. The male sex was associated with higher adherence, as well as greater education level and family income. The Batalla Martinez test demonstrates that only 40.42% of patients had some knowledgement about their disease. Thus, the factors associated with low adherence were: use of more than five medications, low education and gender. On the other way, these results shows that adherence to the medication was associated with the best clinical score.