The causes of failure to control hypertension in population aged over 65

¯Abstract Background: Hypertension is a major cause of cardiovascular disease and the prevalence of hypertension shows a linear increase with aging so that it increases by 10 percent for every 10 years. Objective: To investigate the causes of failure to control blood pressure in people aged over 65 years. Methods: This research was a descriptive case-control study on 200 cases aged over 65 years, who were diagnosed with hypertension through a routine travel check-up for pilgrimage to Mecca, carried out at Isfahan Amine Hospital in 2003. Following the medical examinations and measuring blood pressure according to WHO standards, the subjects were divided into two groups marked as controlled blood pressure (case group) and uncontrolled blood pressure (control group). A questionnaire was filled in for each subject and the data were analyzed with X2 and t-student test. Findings: The age mean values were 70.7±5.2 and 69.5±4.9 in case and control groups, respectively. In case group, less than half of the subjects were taking their anti hypertensive drugs regularly and 12.5% followed their own way of self-therapy. 55% of people in case group expressed a lack of motivation as the cause of discontinuation of their therapy. Also, their knowledge and practice were found to be significantly lower than control group (p<0.05). Conclusion: In comparison with other studies, it was observed that the most common causes of failure to control blood pressure are poor knowledge, inappropriate practice in avoiding risk factors and the discontinuation of the complete pharmaceutical antihypertensive therapy.