Importance of adherence in the management of hypertension

The WHO indicates that lack of adherence is a matter of the highest priority in Public Health, and is the main cause of not obtaining all the benefits that medications can provide; it is at the origin of medical and psychosocial complications; reduces quality of life; it increases the probability of the appearance of drug resistance and wastes healthcare resources.

The no adherence prevalence in hypertension (HTN) ranges between 55.5% with self-reporting and 46.6% with pill counting, and treatment abandonment occurs in 18.5% of patients.

The electronic prescription has been validated in HTN using MEMS as a comparison, with sensitivity of 87% and specificity of 93.7%, with an area under the curve of 0.903.

In 2019, almost 10 million deaths were directly attributed to HTN. No other disease causes as high a number of deaths and has as high a projected increase in deaths as cardiovascular disease (CVD). By 2030, it is projected that more than 22 million people/year will die from CVD, almost 5 million more than in 2012.

In a predictive model for a period of 10 years in five European countries (Italy, Germany, France, Spain and England), the potential savings of increasing adherence to antihypertensive treatment to 70% has been estimated at 332 million euros (80 million in the case of Spain).

The use of fixed combinations of two or three drugs is a good method to reduce non-adherence.