TY - JOUR T1 - Is therapy adherence to inhaled corticosteroids related to hospitalization, pneumonia or mortality in COPD? JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J VL - 44 IS - Suppl 58 SP - P2424 AU - Kirsten Koehorst-ter Huurne AU - Kris Movig AU - Paul VanderValk AU - Job Van der Palen AU - Marjolein Brusse-Keizer Y1 - 2014/09/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/44/Suppl_58/P2424.abstract N2 - 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 75–125%, 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. ER -