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Compliance with clinic appointments by hypertensive patients after discharge in a tertiary hospital, South East Nigeria

Objective : Compliance with clinic appointment is one of the several ways to assess patients' adherence to treatment with varying rates of compliance with scheduled visits being reported. This study was carried out with the aim of assessing the level of compliance with clinic appointments of our hypertensive patients after discharge from the ward. Method : This is a retrospective study. The case notes of consecutive patients admitted into the medical wards over a 2-year period, from 1st January 1996 to 31st December 1997, were reviewed. Those admitted with hypertension, or with its associated complications like heart failure, cerebrovascular accident (stroke), were studied for their compliance with clinic appointments after discharge, from 1st January 1998 to 31st December 1999. Compliance was divided into 4 categories: a) those who did not attend outpatient clinic at all after discharge; b) those who attended less than six times before dropping out; c) those who attended more than six times but dropping out before the end of 1999; and d) those who kept regular appointments up to the end of 1999. Analyses was done using SPSS. Means and the respective standard deviations and proportions were used to describe the distribution of the data. The chi-square test was used to determine the statistical significance of the difference between the proportions, and the student t-test was used to compare means. A p-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: A total of 211 patients were studied, 105(49.8%) were males and 106(50.2%) females. The mean age (SD) of the population was 58.46±12.23 years, with a range of 24–88 years. There was no statistically significant difference in the ages of the female and male subjects (p= 0.309. Ninety-eight (46.4%) of the 211 patients did not attend clinic at all after discharge, 65(30.8%) attended a few times, 16(7.6%) had moderate attendance and 32 (12.2%) had full clinic attendance for the duration of the study. Conclusion : The findings showed a poor compliance to follow-up appointments in clinics by hypertensive patients admitted into Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi. Key-words :, Clinic, Appointment, Attendance Compliance, Hypertension,