KNOWLEDGE REGARDING HYPERTENSION AND ITS RISK FACTORS IN RURAL COMMUNITY OF SULTANKE, RAIWIND LAHORE

Background: Hypertension is also known as high blood pressure, is a long-term medical condition in which blood pressure in arteries is persistently elevated. The death rate with this is high among people of old age group and people with low status. Objectives: To assess the knowledge of hypertension and its associated risk factors among members of rural community of Sultanke, Raiwind Lahore. Material & Methods: Data was collected after taking permission from the ethical committee of Sharif Medical Dental college.280 persons were interviewed with the help of questionnaire by the researchers and questionnaire was duly filled by their responses. On-Probability convenient sampling technique was used to interview the required number of respondents. Results: The data was analyzed by putting it into IBM Statistic Software. Approximately 73.9% of respondents had some knowledge about hypertension while 26.1% of respondents had no knowledge about hypertension. About 67.1% thought that hypertension had association with headache, 13.6% had some relation with fatigue, and 15.4% thought hypertension causes vision problems and 3.9% had no idea about symptoms of hypertension. About 26.4% thought that increasing age was risk factor, 12.9% in favor of family history and majority 53.6% thought obesity was risk factor for hypertension. No significant association was observed between gender and knowledge about hypertension. Conclusion: The overall level of knowledge regarding hypertension was high among both males and females. Majority of respondents had some knowledge about symptoms of hypertension like headache, fatigue and vision problems etc., therefore having vague knowledge about symptoms of hypertension this could guide them, so that earlier possible management should be started KEYWORDS: Knowledge, Hypertension, Risk factors, Epidemiolog