From the patient perspective, medicine burden is more than the number of medicines, or\nthe complexity of medicine regimens they need to manage. Relationships between the number of\nmedicines, regimen complexity and patient perception of medicine burden are under-researched.\nThis cross-sectional study measured regimen complexity and determined how this and patient\nperceived burden are affected by the therapeutic group. Regimen complexity was measured in\npatients presenting prescriptions to six community pharmacies in South-East England. A sub-sample\n(166) also completed the Living with Medicines Questionnaire which measures patient perceived\nburden. The 492 patients were prescribed 2700 medicines (range 1 to 23). Almost half used at least one\nnon-oral formulation. Complexity was correlated strongly with the number of medicines (r= 0.94),\nnumber of therapeutic groups (r= 0.84) and number of formulations (r= 0.73). Patients using\nmedicines for skin, eye and respiratory conditions had the highest complexity scores. Increasing the\nnumber of medicines, frequency of dosing, number of non-oral formulations and number of different\ntherapeutic groups all increased medicine burden. Although cardiovascular medicines were the most\ncommon medicines used by the majority of patients (60%), those for neurological, psychiatric and\ngastro-intestinal conditions were most strongly associated with high burden. Studies are required\nto determine medicine burden in different conditions, especially neurological conditions, including\nchronic pain.
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