Perceptions of the Patients with Hypertension From Disease and Its Treatment: A Review Article

Hypertension is a major health problem in developing and developed countries and its increasing prevalence is a serious warning to take more attention to this silent disease. This study aimed to survey hypertensive patient’s perceptions towards their diseases and its treatment. This was a systematic review and articles were searched in Iranian and international databases such as IranMedex, SID, PubMed, ISI web of knowledge, Medline, Embase, and Google Scholar with hypertension, treatment adherence, and patient’s perceptions keywords in period of 1980 to 2012. Inclusion criteria were being qualitative study, assessing the perceptions and experience of patients with hypertension and publishing in Persian or English languages. Studies which conducted on patients with other diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and hypertension in pregnancy were excluded. 38 articles were reviewed and results from them obtained in two themes, hypertension from patient's viewpoints and treatment adherence and reasons. Stress was considered as a cause and a consequence of the disease. Patients had negative perceptions toward treatment and knew it adverse. In some cases, existence or absence of physical symptoms encountered as a factor for decreasing or discounting the drugs. No consumption or decreasing of drugs had unintentional reasons including forgiveness, timeless and occupying, drug and physician and nutritional treatment expensiveness, and no insurance. Sometimes the patient decided deliberately to stop or reduce medication. This could be an explanation for the short-term effects or ineffective treatment and educational interventions. So, to be successful in treating and controlling the disease, attention to patient's concerns and perceptions is necessary.