To study the compliance and its related factors of gout patients during the intercritical period.
A total of 218 gout patients were recruited. Compliance and cognition of gout were evaluated via telephone interview. Case control study was performed between compliance patients and non-compliance ones to explore the factors affecting patients' compliance. The association between compliance scores and cognition scores was evaluated by linear regression and correlation analysis.
Of 218 patients, 136 valid questionnaires were collected. The investigation showed that 52.9% (72/136) had more than 20 gout attacks so far. Only 15.4% (21/136) patients had no gout attack during the latest one year. The average compliance score was 3.93 ± 1.78 (total score was 8), and the percentage of non-compliance was 69.9% (95/136). Cognition score was 65.63 ± 18.63 (total score was 100). Among the 136 gout patients, 37 patients (27.2%) were non-cognition, 54 (39.7%) were partial-cognition and 45 (33.1%) were fully-cognition. Only 50.7% (69/136) accepted the concept of long term treatment with urate lowering drugs (ULD), 19.9% (27/136) patients knew the uric acid target and 29.4% (40/136) patients had no confidence to control this disease. Case control study revealed that the percentage of non-cognition in non-compliance group was higher than compliance group, and that of partial-cognition and fully-cognition were lower, although differences had no statistical significance (P > 0.05). Besides, health insurance was better for compliance group (P > 0.05). There was linear correlation between compliance and cognition scores (t = 6.83, P < 0.01) among gout patients.
This study indicates that efforts should be made to improve recognition and medical coverage for gout, which could be a very rewarding strategy for patients' compliance and gout control.