Evaluation of hypertensi̇ve patients compliance with lifestyle change recommendations and drug therapy

INTRODUCTION AND AIM: Hypertension is one of the most important diseases in today's world, which every physician can encounter in daily life, with high morbidity and mortality. Early diagnosis of the disease and raising awareness of patient groups are of great importance in terms of preventing potential complications. Individuals with hypertension internalizing lifestyle changes and adapting to medical treatment recommendations form the basis of treatment. In this study, it was aimed to determine the level of compliance with lifestyle changes and drug treatment compliance in hypertensive patients and to investigate the factors affecting them. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Our research is a descriptive cross-sectional study and it was conducted through face-to-face interviews with 351 hypertension patients who applied to the outpatient clinics of Sakarya University Sakarya Training and Research Hospital Family Medicine Clinic and Zümrüt Müftüoğlu Education Family Health Center affiliated to our clinic for any reason. Volunteer patients who applied to our outpatient clinics, were 18 years of age and older, had been using antihypertensive drugs for at least 1 year, had no communication barriers, and accepted that they will be involved in a study. A 31-item questionnaire and Morisky 8-item Medication Compliance Scale were applied to the patients, which included sociodemographic data prepared by the researchers, general information about the disease, and questions about compliance with lifestyle change recommendations. RESULTS: In our study, 85.2% of the patients were informed about the lifestyle change recommendations by their doctor when they were diagnosed with hypertension; It was found that there was a decrease in salt intake and weight, an increase in physical activities, and a positive increase in eating habits were found to be statistically significantly high. The daily salt intake is less than 5-6 g in patients who live in a rural area compared to patients in an urban area, those who have a sphygmomanometer at home compared to those who do not have a blood pressure monitor at home, those who regularly and sometimes measure their blood pressure compared to those who do not regularly measure their blood pressure, and those who regularly go to the controls compared to the patients who do not regularly go to the controls. Compliance with treatment was found to be statistically significantly higher in patients with high blood pressure (p<0.05). CONCLUSION: We think that explaining lifestyle changes to patients with hypertension and supporting them in implementing these changes will contribute to the internalization of lifestyle changes and increase drug compliance.