ORIGINAL INVESTIGATION Self-reported Medication Adherence and Cardiovascular Events in Patients With Stable Coronary Heart Disease The Heart and Soul Study

Background:Nonadherence to physician treatment rec-ommendations is an increasingly recognized cause of ad-verse outcomes and increased health care costs, particu-larly amongpatientswith cardiovascular disease.Whether patient self-report can provide an accurate assessment of medication adherence in outpatients with stable coro-nary heart disease is unknown. Methods: We prospectively evaluated the risk of car-diovascular events associated with self-reported medi-cation nonadherence in 1015 outpatients with estab-lished coronary heart disease from the Heart and Soul Study. We asked participants a single question: “In the past month, how often did you take your medications as the doctor prescribed?”Nonadherencewas defined as tak-ing medications as prescribed 75 % of the time or less