―Regular Articles― Medication Management Skill and Regimen Compliance are Deteriorated in the Elderly Even without Obvious Dementia

We investigated whether regimen comprehension deteriorated in the elderly patients who did not suŠer from obvi-ous dementia. Eligible patients were ambulatory elderly patients who did not show any signs of dementia and could visit our outpatient clinic by themselves. 138 patients (age: 43―89, 75 males and 63 females, underlying diseases: hyperten-sion, hyperlipidemia, arrhythmia etc.) were tested with a regimen comprehension scale (RCS: Jpn J Geriat 1997; 34: 209–214). The diŠerences in scores among individuals increased with age. Scores of 5 or less in the RCS were recorded in 10 out of 69 patients aged 65 or more, but no such scores were recorded in younger patients (p＜0.01). The 60 patients who scored less than full marks were classiˆed into two groups, the T-group (tutored by pharmacists), and a Non Tu-tored group. RCS was tested again in both groups. Only in the T-group (n＝28), did the second scores increase sig-niˆcantly (from 7.2±0.9 to 8.6±2.0 (m±SD); p＜0.01) after tutorial by pharmacists. Comparing the 7 patients who obtained an RCS score of 5 or less and age- and gender-matched controls who got full marks, there was no diŠerence in the HDS-R test. These results suggest that even in elderly patients who did not show any signs of dementia, the regimen comprehension deteriorated with age, and tutorials in medication protocols were considered to be eŠective. Key words―regimen comprehension; regimen tutorial; elderly patients; dementi