As the cerebrovascular disease and malignant neoplasm become leading causes of death in Korea, particular interest in the management of hypertension that has been well known as major intermediate cause or risk factor of cerebrovascular disease, needed to receive more attention.
The main goal in the management of hypertensive patients is to set a comprehensive control program under the community and supervize in order to keep the patient aware of their illness and following therapeutic recommendations continuously. Unfortunately, most of the patients drop out of this program, which is a major problem that needs to be solved through studying every factors affecting such hazards in the treatment.
For these reasons, the author reviewed medical records of hypertensive patients who visited Kangwha Community Hospital from July 1, 1983 to September 30, 1984, and the questionaries of 127 patients by home visiting in order to study how many patients quit the treatment and to find out the variables affecting its outcome. Then it was transformed to code to analyze using S.P.S.S.
1. If the patients who visited Kangwha Community Hospital less than twice a year, included in the drop out group, the percentage rates 66.1%(84 patients in number), and if the patients who visited the hospital more than 3 times a year, included in the continuous treatment group, it reveals 33.4% that is 43 patients.
2. Variables affecting the continuity of the treatment were age, education, address, past history of hypertension, placement of initial diagnosis of hypertension, chief complaints, route of visit, feeling about improvement and revealed to be statistically significant.
3. According to correlation analysis of the eight variables, age and education, route of visit and past history of hypertension and route of visit and chief complaints, revealed to have a significant correlation between each other. However, they were included for analysis as their correlation coefficients were less than 0.5.
4. Through stepwise descriminant analysis of eight variables, four of them, route of visit, chief complaints, past history of hypertension, feeling about improvement were selected to be significant ones used for the predication of drop out.
As a result, out of total 127 hypertensive cases, 83.8% of 84 drop-out patients was predictable. Of 43 continuous treatment patients, 58.1% can be predicated. Therefore, total predication power reached 74.8%.