OBJECTIVETo explore the rate of compliance, influencing factors and the safety of patients with onychomycosis under treatment of oral antifungal agents.

METHODSAccording to the scoring clinical index of onychomycosis (SCIO), 330 patients with onychomycosis, their target nail's integral of the SCIO were calculated and randomly divided into three groups under the baseline of the SCIO integral range. Patients were treated with intermittent pulse itraconazole (A group), continuous terbinafine (B group) and intermittent terbinafine (C group) respectively. Self-administered questionnaire was applied in the survey on every onychomycosis patient.

RESULTSThe average rate of compliance was 55.15%. The cure rate for those compliance with doctors' order was 89.01%, while it was only 30.41% for those noncompliant patients The overall non-compliant rate was 44.85%. Among the noncompliant ones, 29.73% were worried about the side effects of medicine, 22.30% thought that they had already been cured, 15.54% was due to economic reasons and 12.16% could not bear the side effects of medicine. It was found that the compliant rates were significantly correlated to ageing, position of the target nails, the integral of the SCIO and the therapy scheme (P < 0.05), while no significant correlations were seen between male and female, culture degree and course (P > 0.1). The frequency of adverse incident of A, B, C groups were 22.73%, 21.43%, 23.15% respectively, but without statistical significance (P > 0.1). Majority of the adverse incidents happened during the first month of therapy but were mild and reversible.

CONCLUSIONOur results showed that the overall compliance was low which exerted a significant influence on the curative effect of onychomycosis patients. Factors as ageing, position of the target nail, integral of the SCIO and the therapy scheme had an influence on the compliant rate. When treating onychomycosis with oral itraconazole, the results seemed to be just as safe as when using terbinafine.