• Presented: Taylor & Francis (2025)

  • Collaborator: Servier

  • Authors: Michel Azizi, Julien Magne, Aleksander Prejbisz, Vitoria Cunha, Pankaj Gupta, Jan Vaclavik, Jorie Versmissen, Véronique Cornelissen, Maria Dorobantu, Giovambattista Desideri, Alexandre Persu, Sverre E. Kjeldsen, Reinhold Kreutz, Thomas Weber

In patients with asymptomatic chronic diseases who need to take lifelong medications, like hypertension, understanding their perspectives, beliefs, motivations and barriers to pharmacological treatment is of utmost importance as it may influence their adherence and help health professionals to find the right paths to guide that engagement. Indeed, poor adherence to prescribed medications and lifestyle recommendations is recognized as a major contributor to poor BP control worldwide. Our survey conducted in five large European countries in more than 2000 mainly older hypertensive patients prescribed less than 2 antihypertensive treatments on average shows the following:

  • more than 80% of participants acknowledge the need to be treated lifelong and that medications are necessary to control their BP and maintain their good health;
  • antihypertensive therapy represents a low burden in their daily life except for participants with a high-risk of non-adherence;
  • self-reported adherence is high and unintentionally missing doses is the most common cause of non-adherence;
  • patients seldom report episodes of non-adherence to their physicians;
  • the risk of non-adherence is highest in patients with a high emotional and QoL risk score;
  • the majority of patients (58%) report that they have no need for additional motivation to adhere to their prescription, but this was not the case of patients with a high risk of non-adherence or a high emotional risk score who had a high demand for more support and information on hypertension and its treatment.