Assessment of hypertensive patients' knowledge about lifestyle risk factors and warning signs of stroke

Abstract

Background Stroke is one of the leading causes of death globally. Awareness of stroke modifiable risk factors and warning signs are important for stroke prevention.
Objectives To assess hypertensive patients' knowledge regarding lifestyle risk factors and warning signs of stroke.
Method A descriptive study was conducted on 114 hypertension patients who attended chronic disease center in Sulaimani city. The study was carried out for the period of February to April 2015. A questionnaire has been used to collect relative data about patients' characteristics
and knowledge regarding lifestyle risk factors and warning signs of stroke. Data were analysed through SPSS 20, and descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage and mean) and inferential statistics (F-test and t-test), the figure of p > 0.05 was considered as the statistical significant.
Result Patients' knowledge regarding stroke lifestyle risk factors and stroke warning signs were low of 55.3 and 76.3% respectively. Physical inactivity has lower (17.5) percentage among lifestyle risk factors. The patients' knowledge was influenced by patients' age, gender, education levels and duration of hypertension (p > 0.05).
Conclusions Hypertensive patients complained from lack of knowledge regarding stroke lifestyle risk factors and warning signs. Physical inactivity was less identified risk factors. Young, female, high level of education and longer duration of disease tended to have higher knowledge.
Recommendations Our study results recommended that there was a need to bring high risk group awareness about stroke risk factors and warning signs, particularly to the population with hypertension.