Pattern of Medication Prescribing and Factors Associated with Meeting of Target Blood Pressure among Persons with Hypertension in Federal Police Referral Hospital, Ethiopia

Abstract

Introduction: Hypertension is one of the highly growing chronic health challenges worldwide causing a significant number of deaths and cardiovascular complications. The prevalence of the condition in Ethiopia was estimated to be 19.5% with an urban and rural subgroup proportion of 25.7% and 14.7% respectively. This study was conducted to assess the pattern of prescribing antihypertensive medications and factors associated with BP target meeting among persons with hypertension in Federal Police Referral Hospital. Method: An institution based cross sectional study was conducted from 15th October 2016 to 15th January 2017. A systematic random sampling technique was employed in selecting the study participants. Data was collected using a semi-structured interview of study participants and visiting medication records. SPSS version 20 was used for data entry and analysis. Results: Of the 330 subjects required to be included in the study, 318 (96.4%) fulfilled the inclusion criteria and were considered for further analysis. Diuretics were the top prescribed class of antihypertensive agents accounted by 201(63.2%) of the subjects. Hydrochlorothiazide, a thiazide diuretic, was the most frequent. Next highly utilized classes of drugs included; calcium channel blockers among 172 (54.1%) subjects followed by angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors prescribed for 153 (48.1%) participants. Target meeting for the systolic and diastolic blood pressure accounted for 142 (44.7%) and 140(44%) of the study subjects respectively. Overall target meeting of the two variables was attained by 103(32.4%) of the participants. Conclusion: Diuretics were the class of drugs most frequently prescribed succeeded by CCBs and ACEIs. The result of this study has also shown that overall BP target meeting among the subjects was suboptimal. Multivariate binary logistic regression has shown that gender, duration of therapy and dietary adherence were associated with BP target meeting.