Medication Adherence and Its Association With Quality of Life Among Hypertensive Patients Attending Primary Health Care Centers in Saudi Arabia

Background Chronic diseases require long-term medication and adherence to medication is important for the control of disease as well as prevention of complications. Non-compliance may lead to worsening of the disease, which may affect patients' quality of life. This study aimed to assess the level of medication adherence and its association with quality of life (QOL) among hypertensive patients in Buraidah, Saudi Arabia. Methods A cross-sectional study was carried out in which 299 hypertensive patients were recruited from the randomly selected primary health care centers. Medication adherence was assessed by Hill-Bone Medication Adherence Scale, and quality of life was assessed by the World Health Organization’s Quality of Life (WHOQOL)-BREF. Multivariate linear regression was used to assess the association of medication adherence with quality of life. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 21.0 (IBM Inc., Armonk, USA). Results The prevalence of poor adherence was found to be 38.8%. We did not find a significant association of medication adherence with any of the four (physical, psychological, social relationship, and environmental) domains of WHOQOL-BREF. However, poor medication adherence was associated with poor perceived overall QOL adjusted β=-0.012 (95% confidence interval [CI]: -0.021 to -0.002; p=0.018) and health adjusted β=-0.013 (95% CI: -0.025 to -0.002; p<0.018). Conclusion We found a high prevalence of non-adherence among hypertensive patients. This calls for developing interventions to improve compliance with medications to prevent complications of hypertension. Our study could not find a significant association of medication adherence with any of the domains of QOL, while poor adherence was associated with lower overall perceived QOL and health. Nonetheless, worsening of disease due to non-adherence may affect the QOL of patients. We recommend large scale prospective studies to explore the relationship between medication adherence and QOL.