Past and current trends in patient noncompliance research: focus on diseases, regimens-programs, and provider-disciplines.

Patient noncompliance is discussed from an historical perspective with special attention given to the fact that although the medical profession was aware of noncompliance from the earliest times the first research on noncompliance was not done until the 1940's. Trends within the literature on patient noncompliance published between 1943 and 1984 are examined. The largest share of contributions being made to the noncompliance literature was and is from journals devoted to general medicine and psychiatry. The largest share of research is with patients suffering from hypertension, psychiatric patients, and children. An increasing amount of attention is being paid to diabetic patients. The bulk of the research on compliance remains patient-focused, with relatively little but much needed research designed to study characteristics of providers, regimens, or the health care setting. There are good reasons for compliance researchers to consider diabetology as a worthwhile area for investigations.