Health Policy Manag.  2021 Sep;31(3):292-300. 10.4332/KJHPA.2021.31.3.292.

Medication Adherence for Hypertensive Patients in Korea

• Hong JS

• KMID: 2525753
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.4332/KJHPA.2021.31.3.292

Abstract

Background
Medication adherence in hypertension is the most important to control blood pressure and prevent major complications. The purpose of this study was to identify factors affecting medication adherence and to examine the relationship between medication adherence and blood pressure control in Korea.
Methods
This study used data from the 7th Korea national health and nutrition examination survey (2016–2018) of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. We selected 4,063 hypertensive patients from the data. And we choose socio-demographic, health behavior, healthcare utilization, and severity characteristics as hypertensive patient characteristics.
Results
Of the patients with hypertension, 92.3% had shown adherence to medication as of 2016–2018 and shows variation according to the characteristic of patients. The cases with male, under 50 years old, urban area, single household, unmet medical services, less than 5 years of hypertension duration, no comorbidities (diabetes mellitus, myocardial infarction) showed significantly low medication adherence. After adjusting for confounders, adherent patients tended to have lower current systolic blood pressure (β=-10.846, p<0.001) and diastolic blood pressure (β=-5.018, p<0.001) than nonadherent patients. And, adherent patients increased the control odds of blood pressure compared with nonadherent patients (odds ratio, 3.02; 95% confidence interval, 2.21-4.12).
Conclusion
This study confirmed that adherence to antihypertensive drugs was effective in controlling blood pressure. In order to more actively manage hypertensive patients at the national level, it is necessary to make an effort to improve the medication compliance of nonadherent groups, such as early-diagnosis patients, young patients under 50 years of age, and patients living alone.

Keyword

Hypertension; Medication adherence; Blood pressure