Insights into Antihypertensive Medication Adherence: A Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital Study on Patient Compliance and Influencing Factors

Background: Hypertension is a chronic long-stay disease that requires proper treatment management and regular medication assessment, which ensure that the disease does not progress into a disorder. Medication Adherence is an easy access and assessable tool that provides insights about patient compliance to medications and effectiveness of therapy. This helps the physicians to improve patient treatment outcomes and quality of life by addressing the factors that influence medication adherence. Objectives: To assess patient compliance to antihypertensive medications and factors that influence medication adherence. Materials and Methods: A prospective Observational study was conducted in a tertiary care teaching hospital in Hubli among 200 hypertensive patients, the study subjects were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, data was collected and sorted from patient data collection forms. Medication adherence rating scale was used to assess medication adherence among patients. The association between variables such as age, social status, co-morbidities and polypharmacy with medication adherence was determined using Pearson chi-square in SPSS version 25. Results: Our study included 200 hypertensive patients, most of them were males 64%. On assessing Medication adherence rating scale, we found that majority 62.8% of the study subjects adhere to their antihypertensive medication. The association between various factors that influence medication adherence was determined by Pearson Chi-square, we observed that age, social status, co-morbidities and polypharmacy were statistically significant at p=<0.05 with medication adherence. Conclusion: Medication adherence plays a significant role in assessing the patient's response to a treatment and improving their quality of life. Similarly, our study highlights the importance of assessing medication adherence, especially in study subjects with existing co-morbidities and polypharmacy, thus reducing hospital stays and unnecessary side effects.