Assessment of patients’ knowledge, attitude and practice regarding hypertension in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Hypertension is an important risk factor for cardiovascular complications. This can be described as the ‘sleeping snake’ which bites when it wakes up. We aimed to determine the knowledge (K), attitude (A) and practice (P) [KAP] regarding hypertension among hypertensive patients taking antihypertensive medication in Medical College, Kolkata.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among the hypertensive patients from July 2017 to September 2017 using random sampling technique. Suitably designed and validated questionnaire of knowledge, attitude and practice on hypertension consisting of 20 questions were used to determine the KAP scores. The difference in the median KAP scores between sex, level of education and duration of hypertension were assessed using Mann-Whitney U test.Results: A total of 318 patients met the inclusion criteria and majority of them were male (53.15%), had received secondary level of education (43.08%) and had hypertension for <5 years (56.91%). The blood pressure ranged from 110-240/70-120 mmHg. The median K, A and P scores were 4 (5), 5 (0) and 3 (1) respectively. Practice was statistically associated with sex (p<0.007). Significant differences were found between patients with below and above secondary educational level regarding knowledge (p=0.0001), attitude (p=0.02) and practice (p=0.001). Patients with duration of hypertension more than five years had better knowledge compared to those with duration less than five years (p=0.0001).Conclusions: Our study showed that there are scopes for improving knowledge, attitude and practice among hypertensive patients for better management of hypertension.