Compliance and Health Professionals’ role: The case of osteoporotic patients

Osteoporosis is considered to be a major public health issue worldwide. Despite the large number of effective medication regimens available, patients’ non-compliance in treatment is one of the most common obstacles when attempting to achieve best therapeutic results against osteoporosis. The purpose of this review is to analyze the parameters concerning compliance of osteoporotic patients and to highlight health professionals’ role. Many studies are shown that the compliance in long-term anti-osteoporotic therapeutic schemes is low in developed countries, while it is estimated to be even less in developing countries. Compliance rates are usually lower when the disease is asymptomatic or when the therapy has side effects. There are many factors which lead to non – compliance to treatment regimens, and various techniques that a health professional could utilize in order to improve anti-osteoporotic therapeutic results are presented in this paper. Early identification of potential non-compliant patients is an important first step for health professionals, when aiming at resolving the issue of non-compliance and achieving better therapeutic results. A multi-factor model such as Fracture Liaison Service (FLS), which includes specialized nurses, could optimize the chances of better education, monitoring and achieving treatment compliance for the patient