Hypertension: awareness, knowledge, attitudes, treatment and control among hypertensive workers

ABSTRACT

This work aimed to assess awareness and knowledge of working hypertensive patients and study its relation to their attitude and practice. The study also aimed to assess level of knowledge post health education intervention.Two hundreds and fourteen hypertensive workers from the National Research Center participated in the present study. A questionnaire was designed to assess the characteristics o f the studied patients and their KAP towards hypertension and was filled during interview, Health education about hypertension was provided to 180 patients through face-to-face interview and their knowledge was reevaluated using the same questionnaire. About 90% of the studied patients were aware that they were hypertensives, over three-quarter of patients received their treatment, 59.7% were adherent to regular treatment and only 38.2% had controlled blood pressure. About half of the studied patients indicated that modifiable variables were the most common attribution believed to cause hypertension and over two thirds of the patients recognized changes in life style needed for controlling hypertension. Positive attitudes, good practices and adherence to medical treatment and controls were not found to be significantly associated with good knowledge score. Multiple logistic analysis revealed that the most important variables significantly predict a good knowledge score were male sex, patients living in semi urban areas and those with duration o f illness /< 7 years. The post HE level of knowledge was significantly higher among males than females and among those with university education than lower level of education. Comparing pre and post health education knowledge revealed highly significant increase in post HE level of knowledge