Evaluation of care provided for people with arterial hypertension in Family Health Strategy Services

Abstract

BACKGROUND: to analyse the health care provided for people with arterial hypertension by family health strategy teams in Blumenau, state of Santa Catarina, Brazil. METHODS: overall, 595 people with arterial hypertension who live in the area of 10 family health teams were interviewed. The studied variables were: demographic and socio-economic characteristics, life style, treatment, co-morbidities, adherence to treatment, satisfaction with health service and blood pressure. Descriptive statistics and association tests (Student's t-test, ANOVA, chi-square) were used. RESULTS: the mean age was 60.6 years old. Most are female, white, married, with four or less years of formal education, unemployed, and with low social status. White people and those with high social status had more years of schooling (p<0.001); 13.1% reported smoking and 23.7%, use of alcohol. The mean time of use of hypertension medicines was 127.9 months, on average, 1.9 medicines, and isolated ACE inhibitors were the most used medicines (19.6%). Adverse drug reactions were reported by 20.6%, which were associated with higher number of medicines (p<0.02). More than 90% were satisfied with health services. The prevalence of non-adherence to medicines was 53.1%. Blood pressure > 140x90mmHg was presented by 69.3% and was associated to non-adherence, sedentariness and low social status. CONCLUSIONS: although there is access to care and medicines and despite people's satisfaction with the care provided, high prevalence of non-adherence and uncontrolled blood pressure highlight the need of improving the quality of care.