RESUMO
A number of factors have been identified that contribute to non-adherence to medications in hypertension, one of which is the drug regimen complexity. The purpose of this study was to identify patients with poor adherence to antihypertensive therapy and compare the levels of adherence with daily dose frequency of antihypertensive therapy [Single Daily Dose [SDD], Twice-Daily Dose [BID], and doses of more than twice daily [> BID]]. A cross sectional study was conducted on a convenience sampling of 518 patients with antihypertensive therapy at the Clinic of General Hospital of Penang, Malaysia. Adherence was assessed using the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale [MMAS]. The one-way Analysis of Variance [ANOVA] was used to compare the means of three categorical independent variable [SDD, BID and > BID], and one continuous dependent variable scores ranging from 1 [adherence] to 5 [poor adherence]. Our results show that, the MORISKy scale items were summed that 195 patients had poor adherence to hypertensive medication. According to this result, 51.3% of our total sample was taking their medicines irregularly. Also we found a significant relationship between daily dose frequency groups and adherence at level p< 0.001. It shows that hypertension patients groups, who have more daily dose frequency, will show higher level of adherence towards antihypertensive medications