Background: The concepts of medication adherence and
Treatment satisfactions are commonly used in clinical research for assessing
pharmaceutical care and improving treatment outcomes. Generally, one would
expect a positive relationship between the two concepts. The objectives of this
study were to investigate the factors associated with adherence to
antihypertensive therapy among hypertensive patients and to assess the
relationship between antihypertensive medication adherence and treatment
satisfaction.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted, adopting the Morisky eight-item
Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS) for the assessment of medication adherence
and using the Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire for Medication (TSQM 1.4)
for the assessment of treatment satisfaction. Descriptive and comparative
statistics were used to describe socio-demographic and disease-related
characteristics of the patients. All analyses were performed using SPSS v 15.0.
Results: Four hundred and ten hypertensive patients were enrolled in the study.
The mean age of participants was 58.38 ± 10.65 years; 52% were female and
36.8% had low antihypertensive medication adherence. There was a significant
difference in the mean scores in the Effectiveness (p < 0.001), Convenience
(p < 0.001), and Global Satisfaction (p < 0.001) domains, but not in the
Side Effects (p = 0.466) domain among patients with different levels of
adherence. After adjustment for covariates using multiple linear regression,
global treatment satisfaction was still statistically significantly (p = 0.001)
associated with medication adherence.
Conclusions: Low treatment satisfaction may be an important barrier for
achieving high rates of adherence to treatment. These study findings could be
helpful in clinical practice, mainly in the early treatment of hypertensive
patients, at a point where improving treatment satisfaction is still possible.