Calidad de vida y adherencia en el seguimiento farmacoterapéutico de pacientes hipertensos

Abstract

Introduction: Health-related quality of life, which allows an assessment of health status and therapy efficacy, is lower in hypertensive patients; the factors that influence this decrease is the lack of therapeutic adherence, so adequate pharmacotherapeutic follow-up is important.

Objectives: To demonstrate the relationship between pharmacological adherence and improved quality of life in hypertensive patients.

Methods: A non-observational, longitudinal study was carried out. The sample consisted of 24 people with essential arterial hypertension; using the DADER method and the Morisky-Green test. Descriptive statistics were used for frequencies and percentages, and in the case of inferential statistics the chi-squared test was used.

Results: Of the total of 24 patients, 75% were female, 53% belonged to the age group 70 years and older. At the beginning of the pharmacotherapeutic follow-up, 45.8% were adherent to their treatment, 69.2% had a high quality of life and the non-adherent group (63.6%) had a high quality of life (p = 0.004). At the end of follow-up, the adherent group was 83.8%, 90% with a high quality of life and, in the non-adherent group, 75% had a high quality of life. No association was found between quality of life and pharmacological adherence (p = 0.408).

Conclusions: The adherent group at the beginning of pharmacotherapeutic follow-up presents a slight increase in health-related quality of life with respect to the end of follow-up. Therapeutic adherence should be considered an important behavior for the control and maintenance of arterial hypertension. Further studies are needed to evaluate the relationship between quality of life and drug adherence in hypertensive patients.