Systemic Arterial Hypertension in the Emergency Service: medication adherence and understanding of this disease

Abstract

Objective: to identify the epidemiological profile of hypertension patients, how much they understand about the disease and the rate of adherence to treatment by these patients who had been hospitalized in the Brazilian emergency service.Methods: this cross-sectional study was performed with 116 patients, both male and female and aged over 18 years, who had been hospitalized in the Emergency Service of a University Hospital between March and June, 2013. The studied variables were data referring to socio-demographics, comorbidities, physical activity and knowledge regarding the disease. Patient adherence to treatment and the identification of the barriers were respectively evaluated using the Morisky test and the Brief Medication Questionnaire. Results: most of the patients involved in this study were women (55%), with white skin color (55%), married (51%), retirees or pensioners (64%) and with a low educational level (58%). Adherence to treatment, in most cases (55%), was moderate and the most prevalent adherence barrier was recall (67%). When medication was acquired at no cost to the patient, there was greater adherence to treatment. Conclusion: this study's patients had a moderate understanding about the disease. The high correlation between the number of drugs used and the recall barrier suggests that monotherapy is an option that can facilitate treatment adherence and reduce how often the patients forget to take their medication.

Health literacy and adherence to treatment of patients with heart failure

“…Considering that HF is a chronic disease which requires frequent use of multiple medications and the need for continuous self-care, mainly related to changes in lifestyle, weight and food control, it is justifiable that a higher literacy level is associated with greater medication adherence, since the complexity of the treatment requires a greater understanding of the individual, and patients with lower degrees of literacy have a deficit in their comprehension and apprehension of content, making it difficult to learn management with the care that the HF requires. Although the medication adherence test used in the present study was developed and validated for patients with hypertension, there are already studies which used it for evaluating medication adherence in patients with heart failure (13)(14) .…”

“…The presence of positive response in the domains identifies a barrier to the prescribed treatment regimen. This instrument was successfully validated in patients with chronic diseases such as hypertension (14) .…”

Hipertensão arterial sistêmica na velhice: um estudo do perfil sociodemográfico

“…Devido às alterações fisiológicas e comportamentais, os indivíduos idosos, pessoas com 60 anos ou mais, são mais propensos a desenvolverem HAS, tal efeito corrobora com o estudo que analisa essa faixa etária como dominante na hipertensão arterial sistêmica 16 . O nível de escolaridade é importante para analisar o grau de instrução dos sujeitos, desta forma, o referido estudo apresentou que a maioria dos indivíduos possuía o ensino fundamental incompleto, estando esse resultado em concordância com pesquisas anteriores [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] .…”

Adesão ao tratamento medicamentoso da hipertensão arterial e fatores associados

“…6 In addition, nonadherence to treatment associated with other sociodemographic factors is one of the main reasons for seeking services emergency. 7 Median adherence on the part of the interviewees demonstrates the awareness of the need for self-care associated with the difficulties of continuous treatment, since it is influenced by several dimensions8 and involves not only taking the drug or not, but if there is a respect by the dose, times, frequency, among others. 6 It was possible to observe that the vast majority of respondents believe that they have been sufficiently informed about their illness and the importance of following the treatment correctly.…”