The compliance evaluation test: A validated tool for detection of nonadherence among hypertensive treated patients

Objectives: To evaluate compliance with antihypertensive therapy by a self- report in patients referred to hypertension specialists. Methods: We studied 484 treated hypertensive subjects referred to several h ypertension clinics and who were treated since at least one year. Patients were asked to fill in the Compliance Evaluation Test (CET), a questionnaire with 6 questions previously validated to assess factors that could affect medication compliance. We defined patients as "good compliant" when "No" wa s answered to the 6 items, as "minor noncompliant" when 1 or 2 "Yes" were a nswered, and as "noncompliant" when 3 or more "Yes" were answered. A good a greement was demonstrated between CET score and compliance evaluated by the number of pills missed during the previous month according to patient inte rview. Results: We observed 8% of "noncompliant", 53% of "minor noncompliant" and 39% of "good compliant". [GRAPHIC] Logistic regression analysis including age, sex, education level, blood pre ssure level and the number of antihypertensive tablets confirm the statisti cal differences observed. Conclusions : In clinical practice, a method of assessing medication compli ance is to ask the patient for a self-report interview. We demonstrated tha t the compliance evaluation test is able to detect factors usually associat ed with poor compliance (young age, elevated blood pressure, number of tabl ets per day). The use of the compliance evaluation test may help physicians to face the problem of nonadherence, among their hypertensive patients.