Nguyen Thi Thu Trieu, Nguyen Thi Yen Hoai, Nguyen Ngoc Tung, Tran Huu Thong, Nguyen Thi Thu Hien
Abstract
Adherence to treatment is critical to effective management of COPD and is key to addressing the growing burden of disease. So, this study conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of a health education intervention on treatment adherence behavior of COPD outpatients and identify the level of health status improvement.
Introduction
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of death and accounted for 6% of all deaths in 2019 in the world, of which more than 80% occurred in low- and middle-income countries. In addition to increased morbidity and high mortality, COPD also causes a significant socioeconomic burden in low- and middle-income countries due to its impact on work productivity [1–2].
Materials and methods
A random control trial was registered in Thai Clinical Trials Registry with the identification number TCTR20240526001. The study conducted in accordance with CONSORT statement (https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/consort/) from March to December 2022 “S1 File”.
Results
After a 3-month intervention period, a total of 45 patients participated in the intervention group, and 45 patients participated in the control group. No patient gave up during the intervention; 12 group calls were conducted with 100% patient participation.
Discussion
Assessing treatment adherence of COPD patients is a challenge in clinical assessment and even in clinical research. Many studies have shown that adherence to long-term chronic disease treatment is suboptimal in real-world settings, and the WHO estimates that only 50% of patients adhere to their treatment regimens [27].
Conclusions
Intervention activities significantly improved treatment adherence of outpatients with COPD. The control group initially evaluated the adherence rate to be 35.6%; after 3 months, this rate increased to only 48.9%; meanwhile, the rate in the pre-intervention group was 35.6%, and after the intervention.
Citation: Trieu NTT, Hoai NTY, Tung NN, Thong TH, Hien NTT (2025) Effect of health education intervention on treatment adherence and health status in patients with Chronic obstruction pulmonary disease: A random control trial. PLoS One 20(6): e0325192. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0325192
Editor: Thien Tan Tri Tai Truyen, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Received: February 18, 2025; Accepted: April 28, 2025; Published: June 24, 2025
Copyright: © 2025 Trieu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: The datasets are available in Figshare.
(DOI:10.6084/m9.figshare.28684955)
Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
