Awareness of Risk factor and Warning symptoms of Stroke among patients with hypertension at Tertiary care hospital of South India

Abstract

Introduction: High blood pressure, also termed as hypertension is a condition that afflicts almost 1 billion people worldwide and is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity. Therefore, this disease is often referred as a “Silent Killer.” In most of the instances, this disease remains asymptomatic until severe to express as one of the following outcomes: stroke, myocardial infarction, renal dysfunction, visual problems and others. Thus, hypertension is affirmed as the major risk factor for stroke, coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction. High blood pressure is one of the most common causes of stroke as it strains blood vessel walls causing them to thicken and deteriorate. Aim: To Assess the awareness of risk factors, symptoms of stroke among hypertensive patients and associate the awareness of risk factors and symptoms stroke with selected variables. Methods: a non-experimental descriptive research design was used in this study. the study was conducted among 300 samples of all the hypertensive patients admitted in Sri Ramachandra hospital and the patients who come for OPD during the study period. Purposive sampling technique is used for the study. The instrument used for this study has 3 components demographic data, self structured questionnaire on risk factors of stroke and self structured questionnaire on symptoms of stroke. Data were collected and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings: With related symptoms severity reveals that majority of the sample 220(73.3%) had poor knowledge and 58(19.3%) had moderate knowledge and 4(1.3%) had good knowledge risk factors Reveals that majority of the sample 156 (52.0%) had poor knowledge and 109(36.3%) had poor knowledge 109 (36.3%) had moderate knowledge and 10(3.3%) had good knowledge. The mean and standard deviation of awareness of risk factors and symptoms of stroke among patient with hypertension was and there was no significant association between any patient with hypertension and selected demographic variables. Conclusion: The study concluded that majority of the samples had poor knowledge on risk factors and symptoms of stoke among hypertensive patients. Here the health care team members need create awareness among public in order reduce the morbidity and mortality rate of stroke.