A recent study discovered that there is an affect regarding patients who disagree or do consult with their doctors regarding inhaling steroids.

The issue here is that doctors had to monitor a control group of their patients to see who was paying attention to doctor’s orders or were disregarding sound medical advice due to their misconceptions about the effectiveness and safety of this form or steroids.  The findings say a lot of what can happen to a patient that does or doesn’t keep up with doctor’s guidance and has possible long term implications for health care overall.

The doctors discovered that when patients and doctors communicate clearly, less misunderstandings occur and patients are more likely to comply with orders and procedures.

The doctors note that the inhaled steroids is a better option for long-term therapy.  Especially for patients with persistent asthma.  It’s because the inhaled steroids reduce the amount of inflammation in the patient’s airways thus bringing the number of asthma attacks down.

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The study consisted of 58 adults with asthma whom all were using prescribed inhaled steroids.  The members of the study had to complete surveys of what they believed about inhaled steroids.  They also had to wear electronic monitoring device for the duration of a month to collect data on their inhaled steroid use.  The participants were all around 44 years of age and women were 66% of the group, 66% were Black, and 46% came from “very poor” incomes.  64% of the participants reported that they had a minimum of one asthma flare-up per month.  The researchers figured it was due to the participant’s beliefs regarding inhaled steroids.

The study was performed at Johns Hopkins University ² and the findings were reported during the meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.

Doctors found that the participants were more likely to comply with doctor’s orders if if they were more concerned about developing a tolerance to inhaled steroids if they took them on a daily basis.  The participants also displayed a tendency to not use the inhaled steroids as doctors directed if the participants thought they could slide by using a lesser amount of the steroids if they felt the treatment was a risk thus unsafe.  In addition, people of low income and those who were Black, showed a likelihood of not complying with the regimen prescribed by doctors.

The issue here is that we have a regimen for asthma that in most cases isn’t being flowed by some patients for ridiculous reasons.  Doctors and patients should be more open when it comes to educating their patients regarding the reasons the they ask patients to comply is because the treatments prescribed actually work.  This study shows that some people just won’t listen to orders no matter what.  They’ll have their own ideas of how to do things and then when they get more ill they won’t want to admit they’ve goofed up.

This has been a problem with medicine for a long time.  Two things happen, either a person just doesn’t have the responsibility to follow orders or they listen to someone else or some religious belief or just plain housewives’ stories.  People need to understand that any medications and treatments prescribed by doctors  comes from years of rigorous testing and approval by the Food and drug Administration.  If a person has some misunderstanding or some form of religious or cultural beliefs that conflict with either  the regimen established by doctors or due to their own laziness, doctors are going to up against the wall and then have to come up with a way to remedy what wouldn’t have happened had the patient complied with orders in the first place.

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2. Johns Hopkins University (jhu.edu) Johns Hopkins University