Types of Discomfort Experienced by Patients

o Patients may experience physical or emotional discomfort from their acne.
o Patients may also experience discomfort with the type of treatment prescribed by their doctor. Often, this is because a treatment is inconvenient and patients find it difficult to comply every day.
o Some patients will comply with a topical treatment that produces extreme irritation and rawness without alerting their dermatologist to the adverse effects they are experiencing unnecessarily.
o Patients may be resistant to using systemic treatments, even if they are necessary to produce beneficial results. Systemic treatments do sometimes produce adverse effects.

Strategies for Dealing with Patient Discomfort

o Education can be a useful strategy for overcoming patient resistance to treatments and ensuring patient compliance.
o A systemic therapy can be shifted to reduce gastrointestinal adverse effects.
o Rawness caused by topical therapies can be reduced by prescribing therapies that do not dry the skin as much as others.
o Topical treatments may also be prescribed every other day rather than every day in the beginning to reduce irritation.
o An individual approach is necessary for each patient.

Convenient Treatments

o Treatments that are kept in the bathroom rather in the refrigerator are more convenient for patients to use.
o Systemic treatments are more convenient when they can be taken either with or without food and when they do not require avoiding dairy products.
o Treatments are more convenient if they do not cause photosensitivity and thus require staying out of the sun.
o Combination treatments that do not require waiting periods between applications are more convenient.
o Treatments that can be applied once daily rather than more often are more convenient.
o Treatments  are perceived as less convenient if they cause adverse gastrointestinal and other effects.
o Convenience equals compliance.

Life Style Changes

o Patients should get 7 1/2 hours of sleep at night.
o Patients should not eat fad diets or fast foods.
o Patients should avoid high cholesterol foods, including a high intake of dairy products.
o Some patients should not use moisturizers, even oil-free moisturizers.
o Patients should not use sunlight to dry their as sun exposure raises the risk of skin cancer.
o Patients tend to comply with lifestyle changes.
Cost and Compliance
o Cost is an important factor for compliance.
o HMOs do not always reimburse for Accutane therapy.

Noncompliance

o If a teen patient is brought to the dermatologist by a parent, it is important to establish a relationship with the teen or compliance may suffer.
o Patients who lean toward noncompliance tend to stop using a therapy after 4 or 5 weeks if they see no improvement. Education and careful explanation by the doctor are key factors in helping these patients continue to comply with therapy.
o Patients who have had bad experiences with a therapy sometimes give up trying to treat their acne. They may turn to self-treatment and home remedies.

Read more: acne-stop.com