@article {Koehorst-ter HuurneP2424, author = {Kirsten Koehorst-ter Huurne and Kris Movig and Paul VanderValk and Job Van der Palen and Marjolein Brusse-Keizer}, title = {Is therapy adherence to inhaled corticosteroids related to hospitalization, pneumonia or mortality in COPD?}, volume = {44}, number = {Suppl 58}, elocation-id = {P2424}, year = {2014}, publisher = {European Respiratory Society}, abstract = {Objective: To study the relationship between therapy adherence to inhaled corticosteroids and morbidity and mortality in COPD.Methods: Therapy adherence of 627 patients was recorded from pharmacy records over 3 years. It was expressed as percentage and deemed good at 75{\textendash}125\%, suboptimal 50-75\%, and poor \<50\% or \>125\%. The relationship between adherence and morbidity and mortality was analyzed by Cox Regression. Inhaled steroids include fluticasone, budesonide, beclometasone, ciclesonide, all as a single component or combined with a sympathomimetic. If a patient used \>1inhaled steroid, therapy adherence percentages were combined to an average adherence.Results: Suboptimal adherence to inhaled steroids is related to hospital admission. Compared to optimal use there is a 1.4 increased risk for hospital admission (table 1).Combining therapy adherence to an average adherence when patients use \>1 inhaled steroid may distort our results. However, analyzing therapy adherence of patients using only one inhaled steroid (n= 508) gave similar results. The Hazard ratio for hospital admission with suboptimal adherence is 1.44 (95\%CI: 1.03-2.03).View this table:Table 1: Cox regression analysis of therapy adherence.Conclusion: Only suboptimal adherence to inhaled corticosteroids is associated with an increased risk of hospital admission.}, issn = {0903-1936}, URL = {https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/44/Suppl_58/P2424}, eprint = {https://erj.ersjournals.com/content}, journal = {European Respiratory Journal} }