Background: The health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of hypertensives may be influenced by blood pressure, adverse effects of drugs used to treat hypertension, or other factors, such as the labelling effect, or beliefs and attitudes about illness and treatment. There is paucity of information on the determinants of HRQOL among black hypertensives especially in the developing countries such as Nigeria. This study describes the HRQOL and its determinants among black patients diagnosed and treated for Hypertension in Nigeria.
Methods: The study was a cross sectional in design that involved 265 hypertensive patients receiving treatment at the medical outpatient unit of the Federal Medical Centre Abeokuta, Nigeria. They were all consecutive patients that presented at the hospital during the period of the study who meet the inclusion criteria and consented to participate in the study. Demographic data, disease characteristics such as symptoms and signs and recent drug history were obtained from the patients and their hospital records as documented by the physician. The SF-36 questionnaire was administered once by interview to the participants to measure their HRQOL. Descriptive statistics was used in summarizing the demographic data and hypertension related histories of the participants. Multiple linear regression was used to model for the influence of socio demographic and clinical variables of the hypertensives on their HRQOL.
Results: Physical functioning domain mean score was far below average (33.53 +/- 29.65). Role physical and role emotional domains were a little above average (54.7 +/- 40.4, 51.1 +/- 40.6 respectively). Role Physical (p = 0.043), Role Emotional (p = 0.003), Vitality (p = 0.014) and Mental Health (p = 0.034) domain mean scores for patients with controlled BP were significantly higher than patients with uncontrolled BP. The overall HRQOL was significantly better in the group of hypertensives with controlled blood pressure (p = 0.014). Increasing blood pressure (p = 0.005) and symptom count (p < 0.001), the presence of stroke (p = 0.008) and visual impairment (p = 0.015) were significant negative predictors of the overall HRQOL.
Conclusion: This study provides evidence for a model that links patients' status with regard to biology (blood pressure), symptoms, and functionality (HRQOL) and may prove useful in guiding follow-up of patients who receive treatment for hypertension. Identification of patient's symptoms, blood pressure, complication/comorbidity and changes in functioning may help clinicians increase their effectiveness in helping patients maintain adherent behaviour with drug and non drug interventions in chronic diseases such as hypertension.