Objectives: A patient’s adherence to follow-up (AFU) plays a key role in the implementation of clinical research with respect to cost and validity. Most present studies focus exclusively on some specific steps during clinical research implementation, regardless of the synthetic action of patientsociety-medicine system. The objective of the study is to provide a comprehensive systematic review of the measurements, associated factors and intervention strategies of AFU across a broad spectrum.
Methods: A search was performed for studies that reported AFU in English in Medline, EMBASE, PubMed or the Cochrane Library from January 1995 to February 2014. Given the huge variety in study design and multifold complexity, a qualitative systematic review instead of meta-analysis was performed for the measurements, associated factors and intervention strategies of AFU according to Cochrane methodology.
Results: A total of 125 included studies identified six measurements of AFU according to different definitions and calculations; the majority of studies used follow-up rate, with calculation methods varying in numerators but with the same denominator. The factors associated with AFU were assigned to 5 major categories, of which “individual patient characteristics” and “research design and practice setting” were most studied, with respect to having the most subcategories (12) and most related studies (76/125) respectively. The most studied type of the 3 major interventions used to improve AFU was information system and interaction improvement (56/99).
Conclusions: The number of published studies regarding the measurements, associated factors and intervention strategies of AFU is increasing, which contributes to improving the final quality of clinical research. Individual patient-centered information system and interaction improvement have been gaining most attention, and would be the most important direction of development to improve patient AFU. While, the function of multiaspect environment factors and research design enhancement remain to be noticed.
Keywords: Adherence to follow-up; Measurement; Associated factors; Intervention strategies; Clinical research
Published on: Nov 23, 2015 Pages: 58-64
Full Text PDF
Full Text HTML
DOI: 10.17352/2455-1414.000023
CrossMark
Publons
Harvard Library HOLLIS
Search IT
Semantic Scholar
Get Citation
Base Search
Scilit
OAI-PMH
ResearchGate
Academic Microsoft
GrowKudos
Universite de Paris
UW Libraries
SJSU King Library
SJSU King Library
NUS Library
McGill
DET KGL BIBLiOTEK
JCU Discovery
Universidad De Lima
WorldCat
VU on WorldCat
PTZ: We're glad you're here. Please click "create a new query" if you are a new visitor to our website and need further information from us.
If you are already a member of our network and need to keep track of any developments regarding a question you have already submitted, click "take me to my Query."