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[Evaluation of patient compliance among hypertensive patients treated by specialists]
X Girerd1, A Radauceanu, J M Achard
1Service de médecine interne, hôpital Broussais, 96, rue Didot, 75014 Paris.
Insights
A self-report questionnaire effectively assessed medication compliance in hypertension patients. The Compliance Evaluation Test identified factors linked to poor adherence, aiding physicians in managing nonadherence.
Area of Science:
- Cardiology
- Pharmacology
- Health Services Research
Background:
- Hypertension management requires consistent medication adherence.
- Assessing patient compliance is crucial for effective treatment outcomes.
- Self-report methods offer a practical approach to evaluating medication adherence.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the efficacy of a self-report questionnaire in assessing antihypertensive therapy compliance.
- To identify factors associated with medication noncompliance in hypertensive patients referred to specialists.
Main Methods:
- A study involving 484 treated hypertensive patients referred to hypertension clinics.
- Utilized the validated Compliance Evaluation Test (CET) questionnaire to assess medication compliance.
- Defined compliance levels: 'good compliant' (0 'Yes'), 'minor noncompliant' (1-2 'Yes'), and 'noncompliant' (3+ 'Yes').
Main Results:
- 39% of patients were 'good compliant', 53% 'minor noncompliant', and 8% 'noncompliant'.
- Logistic regression confirmed statistical differences based on age, sex, education, blood pressure, and tablet count.
- The CET score showed good agreement with compliance assessed by missed pills.
Conclusions:
- Self-report interviews, specifically the CET, are valuable tools for assessing medication compliance in clinical practice.
- The CET effectively detects factors linked to poor adherence, such as younger age, higher blood pressure, and multiple daily tablets.
- Implementing the CET can assist physicians in addressing nonadherence issues among hypertensive patients.
Objectives:
To evaluate compliance with antihypertensive therapy by a self-report in patients referred to hypertension specialists.
Methods:
We studied 484 treated hypertensive subjects referred to several hypertension clinics and who were treated since at least one year. Patients were asked to fill in the Compliance Evaluation Test (CET), a questionnaire with 6 questions previously validated to assess factors that could affect medication compliance. We defined patients as "good compliant" when "No" was answered to the 6 items, as "minor noncompliant" when 1 or 2 "Yes" were answered, and as "noncompliant" when 3 or more "Yes" were answered. A good agreement was demonstrated between CET score and compliance evaluated by the number of pills missed during the previous month according to patient interview.
Results:
We observed 8% of "noncompliant", 53% of "minor noncompliant" and 39% of "good compliant". [table: see text] Logistic regression analysis including age, sex, education level, blood pressure level and the number of antihypertensive tablets confirm the statistical differences observed.
Conclusions:
In clinical practice, a method of assessing medication compliance is to ask the patient for a self-report interview. We demonstrated that the compliance evaluation test is able to detect factors usually associated with poor compliance (young age, elevated blood pressure, number of tablets per day). The use of the compliance evaluation test may help physicians to face the problem of nonadherence among their hypertensive patients.