ADHERENCE TO SECONDARY STROKE PREVENTION THERAPIES IN ISCHEMIC STROKE PATIENTS AT TEACHING HOSPITAL IN CENTRAL JAVA INDONESIA
Objective: Patients who survive from the first stroke have risk factors to be recurrent. Based on American Heart Association/American Stroke Association and PERDOSSI (Indonesian Neurologist Association), medications which are prescribed to reduce the risk of recurrent stroke as secondary stroke prevention therapies include antiplatelet/anticoagulant as well as antihypertensive and lipid lowering agent. Patients’ adherence to the secondary stroke prevention therapies is important to reduce the recurrent stroke. Methods: This is a quantitative research and the data was collected retrospectively. The number of subjects of this study were 165 respondents. The participants were interviewed by researchers about their adherence to secondary stroke prevention by Modified Morisky Adherence Scale 8 (MMAS-8) questionnaire. Patients’ adherence was stated as low (MMAS-8 score < 6); moderate (MMAS-8 score = 6-7) and high (MMAS-8 = 8). This research was taken at a teaching hospital in Central Java Indonesia.Results: Of 165 participants, 48 participants (29%) were categorized to have low adherence, 43 participants (26%) had moderate adherence, and 74 participants (45%) had high adherence to secondary stroke prevention therapies. The reasons for not adhering to the medications were felt better (34.1%), forgetfulness (18.7%), boredom (16.5%), lack of family support (8.8%), lack of time (6.6%), felt worse (5.5%), concern about side effects (3.3%), preference to Complementary Alternative Medicines (3.3%), and cost (3.3%).Conclusion: The number of patients who has high adherence to secondary stroke prevention was 45% and the most common reason why participants did not adhere to therapy was because they felt better (34.1%).