Compliance with antihypertensive medications and its associations and knowledge on Hypertension-Hospital based study in Sri Lanka

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Hypertension is the commonest preventable risk factor for the development of cardio and cerebrovascular disorders. Poor compliance with anti-hypertensive medications is an important yet often an under recognized risk factor for uncontrolled hypertension and rarely has this aspect been investigated thus far in Sri Lanka. OBJECTIVES: To determine the prevalence and associations of compliance with antihypertensive medications and the knowledge on hypertension among patients attending to medical clinics conducted by the Department of Medicine of the Faculty of Medicine, Ragama. METHODS: An interviewer-administered questionnaire and the patients' clinic records were utilized to collect data. Prevalence was assessed using SPSS 22 version. Associated factors were analyzed by binary logistic regression. RESULTS: Prevalence of medium and low compliance are 42.3% and 35.1% respectively. Factors significantly associated with poor compliance were not starting treatment at all due to the feeling that it's better not to start a treatment that they'll have to continue for the whole lifetime (p value 0.04), frequency at which medications have to be taken being too difficult to be followed (p value 0.00), finding it difficult to comprehend the instructions provided by the pharmacist (p value 0.00) and lack of knowledge on hypertension (p value 0.00). CONCLUSION: Compliance with antihypertensive medications can be enhanced by rectifying patients' misconceptions on hypertension.