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Many young adults with hypertension fail to receive lifestyle education
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In a new study, researchers reported that nearly half of young adults with incident hypertension did not receive documented lifestyle education within 1 year.
The researchers’ goal was to determine patient, provider and visit predictors of documented lifestyle education among young adults with incident hypertension. According to the study background, only 38% of young adults with hypertension have their BP under control.
The retrospective analysis, conducted by Heather M. Johnson, MD, MS, and colleagues, used electronic health record data from 500 randomly selected adults aged 18 to 39 years. All were managed at a large academic clinical practice between 2008 and 2011 and met clinical criteria for hypertension as defined by the Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation and Treatment of High Blood Pressure.
The primary outcome was any documented lifestyle education within 1 year of meeting criteria for incident hypertension. Educational topics covered included exercise, tobacco cessation, alcohol use, stress management or reduction, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet and weight loss.
Fifty-five percent of patients had documented lifestyle education within 1 year of incident hypertension. The most frequent topic was exercise (64%). After adjustment, patients who received documented lifestyle education were more likely to have a family history of hypertension and/or CAD (OR=1.96; 95% CI, 1.28-2.98) and hyperlipidemia (OR=2.25; 95% CI, 1.09-4.65) compared with patients who did not receive documented education.
Young adult men were less likely than young adult women to have documented lifestyle education (OR=0.48; 95% CI, 0.29-0.8), and those who had at least five clinic visits during the study period were less likely to receive lifestyle education compared with those who had two or fewer visits (OR=0.48; 95% CI, 0.27-0.86).
In an analysis of visit type, the researchers found that those visiting because of a chronic disease were more likely to receive documented lifestyle education compared with those visiting for other reasons (OR=2.36; 95% CI, 1.68-3.32).
“The development of incident hypertension is an important ‘teachable moment’ to educate about the adoption and maintenance of lifestyle modifications,” Johnson, from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, Wis., said in a press release.
Disclosure: The study was funded by the NIH. The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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