LAUSR

Objective: Hypertensive patients’ compliance to the clinic’s follow up visits was found to be associated with a better blood pressure control and a better compliance to antihypertensive medications. The aim was to detect reasons of non-compliance to office visits in hypertensive patients included in the registry of the specialized hypertension clinics Design and method: Patients were enrolled from the registry of the specialized hypertension clinics of 9 university hospitals. Those who attended less than 3 office visits were considered non-compliant and were contacted through the phone. A simple questionnaire was prepared, and it included pre-specified questions about the reasons of dropping out the office visits. They were also asked about compliance to their antihypertensive medications and salt restriction, and whether they experienced any drug side effects. Results: There were 3014 patients eligible for inclusion in this study but only 689 patients (34.6%) completed the questionnaire. The reasons of non-compliance to the follow up visits in the specialized hypertension clinics were either that patients preferred to follow up elsewhere (n = 546, 79.2%) mostly in pharmacies, 129 patients (18.7%) claimed that the healthcare service was unsatisfactory, 118 patients (17.1%) were asymptomatic and they thought that absence of symptoms meant a well-controlled blood pressure, 136 patients (19.7%) said that the clinic was far from their homes, and 74 patients (10.7%) said that they were referred to the clinic for other comorbidities. Despite non-compliance to office visits, 455 patients (66.0%) were compliant to their antihypertensive medications and 264 (38.3%) patients were compliant to salt restriction. Patients’ reasons for non-compliance to medications were because of side effects (n = 14, 6.9%), financial restrains (n = 13, 6.4%), or because their BP was controlled (n = 20, 9.9%). About 42% of patients used herbs, mainly hibiscus, as adjuvant to their antihypertensive medications. Conclusions: Reasons for non-compliance to office visits were either patient-related or healthcare-related. To improve patients’ compliance, physicians need to allocate more time to educate their patients about hypertension, patients need to follow their doctors’ instructions as regard medications, salt restriction and scheduled office visits, and governments need to provide better and cheaper healthcare services.