Long-term compliance.

This article defines and reviews long-term compliance to health-promoting behaviors in healthy subjects and patients with coronary heart disease. Studies demonstrating problems with patient memory for medical advice reveal the magnitude of barriers therapists encounter in a primary or secondary prevention program. Compliance with weight reduction and exercise conditioning programs in healthy subjects is low because of a variety of behavioral, socioeconomic, and programmatic problems. Long-term exercise training compliance in cardiac rehabilitation programs, despite the presence of a life-threatening disease process, is also low. I present strategies to improve compliance and the rationale for combining these strategies with modification of major risk factors. Physical therapists must be innovative, creative, and experimental in program design when they attempt to improve patients' adherence rate.