A STUDY TO EVALUATE MEDICATION ADHERENCE OF ANTIHYPERTENSIVE DRUGS IN A TERTIARY CARE TEACHING HOSPITAL
Nimmy N. John*, Athira Krishnan, Midhun JV and Riya Juan
ABSTRACT
Background: Adherence to prescribed medication is an imperative issue which can be directly linked with the management of hypertension. Failure to adherence can affect the effectiveness of medications as well as efficiency of health care system. A prospective observational study was conducted in in-patients admitted to general medicine department diagnosed with hypertension aimed to find out the medication adherence. Materials and Methods: Data was collected from case sheets of patients for age, gender, socio- economic data. Informed consent was obtained from patients or bystanders before study. Direct interview was conducted with patients using standardized questionnaire known as MMAS-8. Patients adherence to medications was assessed using scores obtained from the adherence scale. Results: Among 110 in-patients 50 (45.5%) patients were male and 60 (54.5%) patients were female. Most of the patients had low adherence among both genders. Patients under age group of 41-60 years were more (53.6%) in which 39.1% had low adherence. When taking account of education of the patient, graduates and above were only 7 patients (6.4%) but most of them (4.5%) had moderate adherence. MMAS-8 questions were scored appropriately. Education of the patients had a significant positive correlation (i.e., p value = 0.017) between low adherence and high adherence of patients. Conclusion: This study showed that adherence to antihypertensive medications in hypertensive patients were very less. It needs to be continuously evaluated in order to reduce complications and improve quality of life of patients.
Keywords: Medication adherence, MMAS-8, Uncontrolled BP, p value, Questionnaire.
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