Endocrine Abstracts

Aim: In this study, we aimed to evaluate the vitamin D and calcium treatments adherence in patients with hypoparathyroidism after surgery.

Materials and methods: To elucidate the medication adherence, we performed a questionnaire survey using the six item Morisky Medication Adherence Scale for medication of patients with postoperative hypoparathyroidism. These 6 questions were as follows; 1) Do you sometimes have problems remembering to take your medications? 2) Do you pay attention to take medications at exact time? 3) Do you sometimes leave your medication when you feel yourself well? 4) Do you stop sometimes your medication if you feel yourself bad and think that it is associated with medication? 5) Do you know long term benefits of taking your drugs? 6) Do you forget to being prescribed your medications when the prescription time comes? The answers were evaluated as Yes/No. In addition to these six questions, three more questions were added concerning to have worry about side effects of drugs.

Results: Totally 64 patients (12 men, 52 women; median age 48.6±11.6 years) who had postoperative hypoparathyroidism were included in our study. Average duration from diagnosis to evaluation time was 73.0±72.6 months. Average calcium and vitamin D dosages were 1388.39±897.92 mg and 0.61±0.39 μg, respectively. However, in evaluation of calcium usage, motivation level was low in 16 (26.2%) patients and information level was low in 12 (19.7%) patients. Moreover, for vitamin D usage, motivation and information levels were low in 8 (13.3%) and 4 (6.7%) patients, respectively. We found that motivation score of calcium usage was significantly low compared to vitamin D usage (P<0.001) Calcium motivation score was found as decreasing significantly with increasing disease time (r=−0.256 and P=0.046). 38 (59.4%) patients had worry about side effects of calcium treatment. Of these, 10 (15.6%) patients left medication due to this feeling. 55.5% of patients had worry about renal problems such as nephrolithiasis and renal toxicity. 21 (32.8%) of patients declared that they were using lower doses of both drugs than recommended.

Conclusion: In this study, we found that one third of the patients had low motivation for calcium usage and more than half of patients had worry about side effects. We think that these patients must be informed about side effects and convinced about regular and careful follow-up of treatment associated side effects especially in patients who are under calcium treatment.