Therapy adherence day with ‘AAA-AscoltiAmo l’Aadenza’ podcasts

Treatments are effective only when the doctor’s prescriptions are respected: this is the commitment of the Servier Group in Italy which, once again this year, on the occasion of the National Day for Adherence to Therapy, which is celebrated on 12 April, is in first line to help raise awareness of the importance of properly following treatment in chronic diseases. “Generating awareness, raising public awareness, institutions, health professionals: this is the goal of the National Day for adherence to therapy that we strongly wanted and set up three years ago – declares Eleonora Selvi, President of Senior Italia FederAnziani -. It is important to make the patient aware of his or her leading role along the treatment path, to which various players in the health system contribute “. To date, there are still too many patients who reduce, make mistakes or abandon their medication, especially when they have to face long periods of treatment, which inevitably change their lifestyle. “Non-adherence represents a transversal problem for all pathologies – says Pier Luigi Temporelli, cardiologist and medical director at Ics Maugeri, Irccs Gattico-Veruno -. This happens because in most cases the patients have the perception of risk only in the face of the full-blown disease or because, after taking the drug for a certain period, they feel better and feel they no longer need it “.” To try to fill this gap – he continues – we specialists can intervene by simplifying the therapies with the use of pre-established associations of different molecules, as indicated by the European guidelines, and educating the chronic patient to be more ‘compliant’ in a general sense. As with all chronic diseases, adherence plays a decisive role in the health of the patient also in the case of cardiovascular diseases. Just to give an example, not following antihypertensive therapy means in the short term not controlling blood pressure and predisposing the patient, in the long term, to complications worse than the disease itself, such as stroke and heart attack, with an increase of 18% and 12% of cases “. For this reason, the Servier Group in Italy renews its commitment to the issue through a new awareness-raising initiative: ‘AAA – AscoltiAmo l’Aadenza!’, A series of nine informative podcasts, created with the involvement of cardiovascular specialists. Alessandro Cecchi Paone, in his role as science communicator, is entrusted with the task of telling and explaining why it is so important to follow the treatments correctly. “I was very impressed by a statement by one of the specialists – Alessandro Cecchi Paone, journalist and science writer – who I was able to interview during the making of these podcasts remembers: ‘drugs only work if you take them’. this phrase expresses the profound meaning of therapeutic adherence. I believe that patients can understand the importance of following therapies correctly also through information tools such as podcasts. The role of the voice has been rediscovered in recent years thanks to new devices, which allow enjoy this content at any time of the day. For this reason I am thrilled to have given a voice, my voice, to this initiative. ”Podcasts will be available from today on major platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, assistants Alexa and Google Assistant also promoted through the digital ecosystem of the Servier Group in Italy and ‘Al cu hours of adherence ‘(YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter). Chronic diseases affect 60% of Italians over 65 and, among these, cardiometabolic diseases are the most frequent (27%), a note recalls. Although thanks to the pharmacological therapies available, mortality from ischemic heart disease has been reduced by 50% in the last 20 years, still today half of Italians do not know what it means to ‘adhere to the cure’. “For 50 years the Servier Group in Italy has been at the side of patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases – underlines Viviana Ruggieri, External relations, Market access & regulatory director of the Servier Group in Italy – providing a wide variety of effective and well tolerated therapeutic tools that respond to their needs in a targeted manner, also through formulations that in a single poly-pill allow the administration of multiple active ingredients, thus increasing adherence to the therapy itself. Our commitment is also realized through the implementation of initiatives aimed at raising the awareness of all the stakeholders involved, and in particular of educational tools aimed at healthcare professionals, patients and caregivers, such as the digital ecosystem ‘At the heart of adherence’ ” . A non-adherent patient does not only mean a loss of therapeutic efficacy but also a waste of economic resources for the NHS. Failure to adhere to drug therapies is estimated to cost 125 billion euros annually in Europe and $ 105 billion in the United States in terms of avoidable hospitalizations, emergency care and outpatient visits. Although poor drug adherence is a well-known health problem, very few countries measure and report rates of adherence and persistence in treatment. The United States and Sweden are the only OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries to measure and report adherence and persistence of care on a regular basis at the health system level for cardiovascular disease. “It is known that lower levels of adherence and poor persistence to treatment are associated with higher healthcare costs – concludes Enrica Menditto, director of the Interdepartmental Research Center in Pharmaceutical Economics and Pharmaceutical Utilization (Cirff), Federico II University of Naples – important complications and a worsening of patients’ quality of life, as well as greater prevalence and relapse of the disease. In the study recently conducted by my center, we analyzed how to optimize the governance of the health system and improve the outcomes of care. As already happens in some countries of the world, also in Italy it has become essential to include a specific indicator in the essential levels of assistance (Lea) that measures therapeutic adherence and the performance of national health systems in a standardized way. A real challenge at the health level that we can only reach by leveraging on several fronts, from the political-administrative, to the clinical and social one “. The podcast project will integrate the digital ecosystem of the Servier Group in Italy ‘Al Cuore dell’Aderenza’ and will be an additional element of information and knowledge at the service of patients. For more info: www.alcuoredelladerenza.it