Health services and abandonment of antituberculous treament

Abstract

Introduction: Abandonment of treatment is a problem in primary care and health services can contribute to reduce nonadherence. Objective: To determine the risk factors associated with the health services in the abandonment of tuberculosis treatment.
Materials and methods: Retrospective case-control study. The sample was 50 cases and 100 controls. The statistics used were Chi square, Student’s t and OR with logistic regression.
Results: In the bivariate analysis, the degree of primary education (OR 2.1; 95% CI 1.15-3.8), alcoholism (OR 5.14; 95% CI 1.87-1.41), drug dependence (OR 5.14; 95% CI 1.2-13.58), not attending the first appointment (OR 3.19; 95% CI 1.36-7.5) and not being aware of the disease (OR 3.83; 95% CI 1.78-8.23) were risk factors; having a positive attitude (OR 0.067; 95% CI 0.023-0.193), making more than three home visits (OR 0.084; 95% CI 0.036-0.192) and undergoing individual psychotherapy (OR 0.31; 95% CI 0.1-0.95) were protective factors. In the multivariate analysis the variables alcoholism, not going to the first appointment and not being aware of the disease were risk factors (p <0.001), while having had individual psychotherapy, having been visited more than three times by the health center and having a positive attitude towards treatment were protective factors (p <0.001)
Conclusions: The risk factors for abandoning antituberculosis treatment found associated with health services were not having participated in individual psychotherapy or nod having received more than three home visits.