Objectives: To find the non-compliance of patients with Lipaemia with scheduled appointments, to define the profile of non-attending patients and to study the best way of identifying them.
Design: Prospective study.
Setting: Primary Care Centres in the province of Alicante.
Patients: 107 patients with Lipaemia from five General Medical clinics who received treatment with lipid-lowering drugs.
Measurements and main results: Non-compliance was assessed by reviewing the appointment books. Non-compliant patients were defined as those who had not attended 80-100% of the appointments made in the six months since the beginning of the study. Non-compliance with appointments was 16.8% (CI: 9.7-23.9). In the profile study none of the variables analysed showed significant differences. Of the methods validated, level of knowledge had the highest sensitivity (88.9%: CI 81.9-94.1); and medical judgement the greatest specificity (86.5%: CI 79.5-92.5), with the coefficient for probability of low compliance 2.9 and best Kappa index 0.25.
Conclusions: One out of every six patients with Lipaemia does not attend follow-up appointments. There is no profile of the non-compliant patient. Only medical judgement can be valid for suspecting non-compliance with scheduled appointments.