Abstract
Background: Hypertension is an important public health challenge worldwide. Non-adherence to antihypertensive treatment is a big obstacle in blood pressure control and predispose to disease progression to complications.
Aim: to determine adherence to antihypertensive medications among elderly patients, and to elicit factors associated with poor adherence among elderly hypertensive.
Methods: A cross sectional study was done on 160 elderly hypertensive patients gathered from el Demerdash outpatient clinic, Ain Shams university hospital, Cairo, Egypt. The Hill bone scale was used to assess adherence to antihypertensive drugs.
Results: According to Hill Bone Scale for assessment of adherence to anti-hypertensive medications the prevalence was 62.7% of the studied cases were non adherent to medications, while 37.3% were adherent to their antihypertensive medications.The findings of this study show that the significant factors that influence antihypertensive treatment adherence are sociodemographic factors such as Age marital status, education, income, occupation ,health-related factors, patients' knowledge about hypertension and antihypertensive medication adherence.
Conclusions: Advocacy of adherence to antihypertensive drugs should be inculcated in each and every hypertensive patient along with regular and uninterrupted drug supply and high quality health care service in all health care organizations where health education and counseling gets the highest priority