When patients are on maintenance medication for which a generic is available, they might be given a different version of the generic drug when refilling their prescriptions.
Medication persistence was defined by days' supply of maintenance medications for each condition.
In the descriptive statistical analysis, we compared the inpatient costs, the outpatient costs, the costs of the maintenance medications, costs of the drugs used for exacerbation, costs of the reliever therapies and all other medication therapies, and the total costs in all four groups (high-dose SYT, medium-dose SYT, high-dose SED and medium-dose SED).
Make et al. [ 20] developed a score (SCOPEX) that included variables such as gender, number of COPD maintenance medications, number of exacerbations in the previous year, FEV1/FVC and number of daily short-acting bronchodilators for clinicians to predict exacerbations.
In our study we evaluated whether in the real world there was a difference in the costs of maintenance medication, attack-reliever therapies, treatment of exacerbations and total direct health expenditures between patients treated with Symbicort Turbuhaler and Seretide Diskus.
Parents need to understand the diverse triggers and basic mechanisms of an asthma attack, and to understand the necessity of maintenance medication.
In fact, a study of the entire UK treatment system showed that people with opioid addiction who underwent residential or other types of treatment without maintenance medication had twice the death rate of those who stayed on meds.
Despite the use of maintenance medication, recurrence rates in bipolar affective disorder (BPAD) are high.
In addition, 64 of the 73 study participants returned to the clinic to receive their first dose of maintenance medication (methadone or buprenorphine), which the researchers counted as a successful transition to medication-assisted treatment.
Comorbid psychiatric disorders, such as personality disorders and substance abuse, are common, as are somatic disorders i.e. cardiovascular disease, partly associated with prolonged use of maintenance medication [ 8, 9].
