[Recognition of Medication and Adherence to Medical Prescriptions in Patients Using Generic Drugs].

Bases: The prescription based on the active ingredients has fostered the rise of generic drugs, increasing the variety of presentations, which can cause confusion, mistakes and encourage the medication nonadherence. The elderly may be at higher risk due to associated comorbidities and polymedication.

Objectives: To assess recognition of the medication and adherence to medical prescription in elderly patients with changes in their medication appearance.

Methodology: Descriptive cross-sectional study of a sample made by recruitment in Primary Health Care. We performed structured interviews to 96 patients over 65 years: we evaluated the adherence to medical prescription through the Morisky-Green test and we assessed the ability to recognize the medication by a discrimination test using drug boxes.

Results: 99% of the patients (CI95% 94.3-99.8%) reported never to fail in taking their medication. 84.4% (CI95% 75.8-90%) recognized their medication without errors, 67.7% (CI95% 57.8-76.2% recognized the correct active ingredient and 56.2% (CI95% 46.3-65.7%) the right amount of active ingredient. A higher level of recognition was found in women, patients with a superior education level and those without polymedication (p < 0.05). Half of the patients (51%; CI95% 41.2-60.8%) showed adherence to medical prescription, but we found no significant relationship with the socio-demographic variables or the degree of recognition of the medication.

Conclusions: High rate of lack of adherence to drug therapy, but similar to other publications. The education level influences the recognition of the medication, while polymedication has a negative effect. The wrong appreciation by patients considering that they take appropriately their medication contrasts with the real data, and should be taken into consideration.