22 Quality of Life and Functional Capacity Improvement Following Medication Adherence in Long-Standing Hypertension

Objective: Bangka Belitung province has the highest prevalence of hypertension in Indonesia with the rate of 30.9% based on the National Report on basic health research in Indonesia. Whether or not medication adherence improves the quality of life and functional capacity in patients with long-standing hypertension remains unclear. Methods: We enrolled 61 patients with long-standing hypertension in Puskesmas Manggar, East Belitung. MMAS-8 was used to assess the level of compliance in each patient. This assessment resulted in two groups; the adherents and the non-adherents. With a prospective, non-randomized study, we assessed the patients’ quality of life by using WHO-5 QoL Questionnaire on the first month and the fourth month of treatment and 6MWT distances. The results were then analyzed with generalized linear model after data normalization. Results: A significant higher 6MWT distances in adherents group vs non-adherents group (281.9 + 75.15 vs 263.1 + 56.16 m). A significant increment of mean QoL scores was found in the adherents group (77.7 ± 1.0 to 80.2 ± 1.2) after a fourmonth follow-up. Conversely, reduced QoL scores were seen in the non-adherents group (64.5 ± 1.2 to 62.2 ± 1.3). Hence, there was a marked improvement of QoL scores in the adherents group compared to the non-adherents groups (2.5 vs −2.3, p value = 0.006). Conclusion: Medication adherence significantly improves the quality of life and functional capacity in patients with long-standing hypertension.