As a Physical Therapist, I have been telling my patients to take their blood pressure medication and take their time getting out of bed in the morning by "rolling" to one side vs doing a sit up to avoid heart attacks and strokes. According to another recent report
in HealthDay News, failure to take blood pressure-lowering medicines as
directed greatly increases the risk of stroke and death in patients with high
blood pressure.
The study’s authors
report that "These results emphasize the importance of hypertensive [high
blood pressure] patients taking their antihypertensive medications correctly in
order to minimize their risk of serious complications such as fatal and
non-fatal strokes.
They also reported
that Non-adherent patients have a greater risk even 10 years before they suffer
a stroke, and found that there is a dose-response relationship, and the worse
someone is at taking their antihypertensive therapy, the greater their risk.
Patients who didn't
take their blood pressure-lowering medications correctly had a 2.7-fold higher
risk of hospitalization in the second year after being prescribed the drugs,
and a nearly 1.7-fold higher risk in the tenth year, the study also found.
In the actual year
that non-adherent patients were hospitalized with stroke, they had nearly twice
the risk compared to adherent patients.
Noncompliance with
prescriptions is a very large problem among seniors and often contributes to
hospitalizations. That’s why Assisting Hands home aides are trained in
medication management to ensure that loved ones are taking the proper doses and
at the correct times.
Richard Ueberfluss, PT
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