Science & Healthcare

Introduction: medical counselling promoting healthy lifestyles and behaviour can significantly reduce developmental risk and eliminate the leading causes of hypertension (AH). Adherence to treatment can be enhanced by therapeutic education.

Aim: assessment of the effectiveness of medical and psychological counselling and training of patients with arterial hypertension.

Methods: During the period 2015-2017 24 cycles of lectures on therapeutic training were conducted on the basis of the rehabilitation centre of the SRI RME within the framework of the organization of a school of health for the patients with hypertension. The study included 403 patients. After 3 months, 6 months and one year, blood pressure, cholesterol, BMI, adherence to therapy, anxiety and depression were monitored. Study design: a controlled clinical trial with historical control. Statistical processing: IBM SPSS Statistics 20, with the definition of the normality of the distribution of the studied issues and the evaluation of descriptive statistics of numerical variables. Qualitative variables are represented in the form of absolute figures and their percentages. Evaluation of differences in groups is determined by calculating the χ2 criterion.

Results: it was shown a statistically significant increase in adherence to therapy from 5,7 to 13,5%, a decrease in the proportion of individuals with a stable high blood pressure - from 60,1% to 49,7% after 3 months (p < 0,05). The proportion of people with hypercholesterolemia decreased from 58,3 to 47,2% (p < 0,05). Physically, 6,4% of patients became more active during the year of follow-up. Symptoms of clinically expressed anxiety decreased from 10,9% to 6,9%. Signs of subclinical and clinically pronounced depression had a clear tendency to decrease (p < 0,01). There was a significant decrease in anxiety rates throughout the study period (p < 0,01).

Conclusion: The need for widespread introduction of such a technology of therapeutic and prophylactic intervention as health schools for AH patients is caused by the importance of timely correction and prevention of AH complications at the level of primary health care.