Assessment of patients' knowledge of their antihypertensive treatment at the mother and child hospital ‘‘Le Luxembourg’’, Mali

High blood pressure is a major public health problem regarding its prevalence and the extent of its morbidity and mortality and disability after cerebral vascular accident. Effective management requires full adhesion of the patient to the recommendations of medical staff. The adhesion requires a certain level of disease and treatment knowledge. There is a good relationship between the understanding of the disease and its treatment by the patient and good compliance and therefore the success of the treatment. We conducted a prospective cross-sectional study in the Cardiology Department of mother and child hospital of Bamako August to October 2023 to assess patients' knowledge of their antihypertensive treatment. The case report form was used for data collection, entered to Excel and analyzed using SPSS software version 25.0. A total of 211 participants were included in our study. Most of them were over 65 years of age (45%), followed by the 46 to 65 age group. Moderate hypertension was found in 21.3% of patients. All patients on a strict diet were taking angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (21.85%), followed by diuretics and calcium channel blockers (20.85%). 40.76% of participants had a good knowledge of cardiovascular risk factors. More than half of the participants (53.6%) had an intermediate level of knowledge about their treatment, and 68.2% had poor knowledge of medication adherence. A significant association (p = 0.03) between good knowledge of cardiovascular risk factors and poor compliance was found. Participants with good knowledge of their antihypertensive treatment were not adhering well to their treatment (p = 0.002). This study reports poor adherence to treatment among patients with hypertension under observation in the cardiology unit in Luxembourg, Mali.