| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 公共衛生研究所 === 92 === The purpose of the study is to understand the relationship between awareness, the change of lifestyle of hypertensive elders in a rural community. We use a follow-up design for the research. We did community-based screenings for people over 65-year-old living in Nan-Hua township, Tainan county in 2002 as the base study, and followed up them in 2004. We used a structured questionnaire to interview each participant face-to-face. The content of questionnaire included gender, age, marital status, educational level, lifestyles (smoking, alcohol drinking, and physical activities), medication, and blood pressure monitoring. We also checked body weight, body height, and blood pressure for each participant.
There were 762 elders in the base study and 574 of them in the follow up study. Among those 574 participants in both studies, 233 of them were hypertensive cases which served as our study subjects. We divided all subjects into 3 groups. The first group includes the cases of being aware of hypertension or having been taking anti-hypertensive drugs before 2002 (old cases, all aware). The second group includes the cases who were newly diagnosed hypertension in 2002 and were aware of hypertension or have been taking anti-hypertensive drugs after 2002 (new cases, aware). The third group includes the cases who were newly diagnosed hypertension in 2002 and were unaware of hypertension in 2004 (new cases, unaware).
The result of the study reveals the percentage of awareness to hypertension increased from 64.4% in 2002 to 89.3% in 2004. There is no difference in the change of smoking behaviors and alcohol drinking within groups or between groups during these two years. Only physical activities have been found increase in the second group. Also, there is no difference in the change of blood pressure or body weight among groups; however, they increase in every group. In the frequency of taking medications, there is significant differences among groups which 76% in the first group and 43.1% in the second group have been taking medications over 5 days a week. In the frequency of self blood pressure monitor, no significant difference among groups was found.
This study showed an increase of awareness to hypertension between base screening and follow-up period. However, no significant change was found in lifestyle change except for physical activities. Although there is no difference in the change of blood pressure or body weight, there is an increase in each group. Thus, the study suggests public health professionals be aware the above result, and focus on following up hypertensive cases regularly.
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