[Adherence of patients with varicose veins to compression therapy]

The study was aimed at determining adherence of patients with lower limb varicose veins to medical recommendations in relation to compression therapy during a year.

A prospective comparative study Patients cOMmitment to coMpression theraPy (POMP) was carried out, involving surgeons-phlebologists each of whom had for 5 weeks enrolled into the study patients presenting with varicose disease of lower limbs veins, seeking advice, and requiring compression therapy. 12 months after the consultations, an outsourcing call center performed telephone questioning of patients in order to obtain information concerning peculiarities of adherence to the recommendations given.

The overall registration database of the study contained individual data on 394 patients. 12 months after the recommendations on using compression knitwear available for telephone questioning turned out to be a total of 246 patients: mean age 44 (IQR 35-55) years, including 42 (17.1%) men and 204 (82.9%) women. Of these, class C1, class C2, class C, class C4 and class C6 had 32 (13.1%), 83 (33.7%) 109 (44.3%), 20 (8.1%) and 2 (0.8%) patients, respectively. Compliant to medical recommendations turned out to be 189 (76.8%) patients: 110 patients using compression knitwear and 79 patients who stopped using them based on medical recommendations. The number of respondents reporting decreased manifestations of varicose disease turned out to be significantly higher in the group of patients using compression knitwear (p<0.001). More adherent to compression therapy were patients having had previous experience using it (p<0.001) and patients whose professional activity was related to hard physical labor and prolonged orthostasis (p=0.031). There were no significant differences in compliance of patients depending on gender and level of education.

We determined high adherence of patients to medical recommendations in relation to compression therapy 12 months thereafter.