The elderly population, aged above 60 years, are prone to various chronic and concurrent diseases. This requires prolonging medication usage, often with complex regimens which affect their medication-taking behavior, compliance, adherence, and overall prognosis of the disease. Thereby, an accurate assessment of adherence behavior and its complimentary factors, prescription analysis are necessary for effective and efficient treatment planning and an overall improvement in the Health Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) of the elderly population. Our study was aimed to comprehend the HRQOL and medication adherence pattern of the elderly. One hundred and thirty-three subjects with a mean age of 66.68 ± 5.49 years were recruited for the study and were assessed for their HRQOL, medication adherence, and the factors influencing medication adherence. Relevant data were collected, questionnaires were administered, and appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics were performed. Our findings demonstrated that there is a noticeable change in the HRQOL of the elderly population. It was also found that subjects were highly adherent to their medications, but certain factors played a major role in influencing medication non-adherence. This implies the importance of determining factors affecting HRQOL, medication adherence, adequate prescription analysis, and promoting and practicing rational use of drugs that can significantly optimize therapy and provide a good prognosis of disease for the elderly population.
Assessment of Health Related Quality of Life and Medication Adherence in the Elderly Population