Adherence to dietary recommendations among hypertensive patients aged 45 to 60 years at Jinja regional referral hospital

Abstract

Hypertension (HTN) is widely acknowledged as the most common cardiovascularaffecting over 31.1% of the adults aged 20 years and older across the globe, and 26.4% of adults aged 18-64 years in Uganda. Diet is one of the most important modifiable risk factors in the development of hypertension that also accounts for approximately 3.2 million deaths annually across the globe. However, much dietary recommendations has been well demonstrated as an effective non-pharmacological intervention to reduce high blood pressure, motivating the general public to follow these dietary recommendations in it is challenging and even harder among the hypertensive. Data regarding patients’ diets is essential as a basis in developing interventions to increase their adherence to beneficial diets. Such data, however, isscanty in Uganda and thus the current study was an attempt to address the data gap. The main objective of this study was to assess the adherence of hypertensive patients aged 45 to 60 years to dietary recommendations at Jinja regional referral hospital A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on a sample of 60 hypertensivepatients (aged 45-60 years) attending care at the hypertensive outpatient clinic of Jinja hospital. Participants’ data were obtained using a well-designed questionnaire and dietary practice and food consumption patterns were assessed using 24hour dietary recall and an FFQ. Data analysis was done using IBM SPSS 22. Majority (98.7%) of the participants had their meals from home, 65% never drunk alcohol, 83.3% never smoked while 53.3% did something to reduce on their sat consumption. and 36.6% had a normal BMI whereas 11.7% and 48.3% were overweight and obese respectively. The mean BMI of the respondents was 29.7%, mean systolic BP 149.9mmHg while diastolic BP was 84.9mmHg. The most reported food group consumed was fats and oils while fruits and vegetables were 83.3% consumed daily by the respondent.Collectively, the findings of this study highlight high adherence to dietary recommendations among hypertensive patients especially 45-60years. However, high levels of discrepancies in dietary knowledge were identified that warrant the need to establish approaches and interventions so as to reduce them and also raise the low levels of dietary knowledge so as to increase the adherence to dietary recommendations