[Hypertension therapy and patient compliance]

In the treatment of chronic disease like hypertension it is very important to achieve good patient compliance. One third of the patients however takes his medicament irregularly. The failure of the treatment is usually caused by the patient, who is not aware of his illness, he feels healthy that's why he does not go to see the doctor or he stops taking the medicine. The cause of bad compliance can also be the doctor who does not spend enough time and energy on his patients. Rarely the therapy is broken off because of the side effects of the medication. In the last year 100 patients with hypertension were asked with help of a questionnaire about their drug-taking habits and their knowledge about hypertension. From the answers we found out that one third of the patients takes his drugs irregularly. Less than half of the patients reaches the normotension. Most of the patients who have been treated for many years do not know the goal blood pressure, the possible complications of hypertension, the goal of the treatment. Often they do not even know the name of their medicine. Compliance is a complicated problem. Improvement could be reached by regular teaching of the patients, by teaching the patients how to measure blood pressure at home, by increasing the number of educational publications, by regular training of the doctors, by keeping the rules of the treatment, by using modern and long-term effective drugs. It would be important to start with teaching the healthy way of living already at a young age.