Development and Testing of the Hill-Bone Compliance to High Blood Pressure Therapy Scale

The objective of this study was to describe secular trends in the distribution of blood pressure and prevalence of hypertension in US adults and changes in rates of awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension. The study design comprised nationally representative cross-sectional surveys with both an in-person interview and a medical examination that included blood pressure measurement. Between 6530 and 13,645 adults, aged 18 through 74 years, were examined in each of four separate national surveys during 1960-1962, 1971-1974, 1976-1980, and 1988-1991. Protocols for blood pressure measurement varied significantly across the surveys and are presented in detail. Between the first (1971-1974) and second (1976-1980) National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES I and NHANES II, respectively), age-adjusted prevalence of hypertension at > or = 160/95 mm Hg remained stable at approximately 20%. In NHANES III (1988-1991), it was 14.2%. Age-adjusted prevalence at > or = 140/90 mm Hg peaked at 36.3% in NHANES I and declined to 20.4% in NHANES III. Age-specific prevalence rates have decreased for every age-sex-race subgroup except for black men aged 50 and older. Age-adjusted mean systolic pressures declined progressively from 131 mm Hg at the NHANES I examination to 119 mm Hg at the NHANES III examination. The mean systolic and diastolic pressures of every sex-race subgroup declined between NHANES II and III (3 to 6 mm Hg systolic, 6 to 9 mm Hg diastolic). During the interval between NHANES II and III, the threshold for defining hypertension was changed from 160/95 to 140/90 mm Hg.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Despite the universally accepted importance of compliance, strategies known for more than two decades to be effective are not routinely incorporated into clinical practice. For the benefits of primary and secondary prevention to be realized in diverse population groups and settings, emphasis must be placed on implementing strategies at the patient, provider, and organization levels. Current knowledge of compliance strategies, if integrated into a multilevel approach, offers enormous promise for decreasing risk and improving patient outcomes.

Four compliance strategies were compared with education alone to investigate their impact on the control of high blood pressure. One hundred twelve subjects with documented high blood pressure were randomly assigned to receive education alone, home blood pressure monitoring, contracts, pill packs, or a combination of techniques. Groups were similar in terms of age, sex, race, initial blood pressure, and medications. At the end of the year, there was no significant change in blood pressure for the group that received education alone (-3/-1 mm Hg). There was a statistically significant change in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure for all compliance groups (-17/-10 mm Hg). Information from compliance questionnaires adds further support to the observation that education alone does not influence compliance while the specific techniques studied did improve compliance. The study was too small to show any difference among techniques.