Abstract:

Background: The coexistence of DM and HTN aggravates the complications of diabetes mellitus such as retinopathy, neuropathy and other cardiovascular diseases like stroke. All this can be avoided by modification of lifestyle with regular checkups but with today’s globalization people are acquiring sedentary lives thus increasing the chances getting HTN at young age also the willingness to chance is very low thus extra effort is needed in educating everyone on the risk factors and how to avoid them. Research shows that at least 68% of 65 years old DM patients die of hypertensive diseases and 16% of these die of stroke. BP control and prevention of related morbidity and mortality is clearly achievable, however, the awareness treatment and control of HTN are low worldwide. The big challenge now is avoid the therapeutic inertia (leaving diabetic patients with BP value of 140/90 mmHg or higher) at all costs, as this would lead to an unacceptable toll in terms of human lives, suffering, and socioeconomic costs. The health team and the subjects affected of HTN and DM must participate actively in the challenge to pass from the guidelines recommendations to the clinical practice and public health programs, to improve the percentage of control to high BP, moreover, the development of research aimed to evaluate new approaches to effectively diagnostic, treated and control high BP is a priority.

Objective: To determine the prevalence of hypertension and pattern of hypertension in adults with DM attending the Bugando medical centre.

Method: A hospital based descriptive cross sectional study which employs both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection will be used.

Results: From the study population of 250 DM patients of which male were 120 (48%) and female 130 (52%), 140 (56%) had hypertension of which 61 (43%) were male and 79 (57%) were female. Most of the hypertensive patients were aged from 51-70 followed by 36 which only 5 (0.04%) had hypertension. There was an association between hypertension prevalence and age as the Chi square=14.05 and the p- value is 0.001 which is <than standard p –value of 0.05, but there was no association between HTN prevalence and sex as there is a p-value of 0.114 which is greater than the standard p-value of 0.05.

Most of the DM patients with HTN were on tables 92 (65.7%) compared to 44 (31.4%) who were on injections and 4 (0.03%) who were just on meals adjustment. Of the hypertensive patients 55 (39.3%) actually exercised and most of this just did slow walks on short distance compared to the DM patients that had no HTN 85 (60.7%) exercised the knowledge on risk factors of HTN with DM was more vivid in the younger generation of the DM patients with no HTN which was 55 (50%) responded that cigarettes would worsen their conditions while the rest 50% said they don’t know (41%) or nothing will happen (9%).

85 (60.7%) of the patients with hypertension knew that cigarette was going to affect their health while the rest did not know or said nothing would happen. Regarding whether the patient had blurry vision, limbs numbness or both the female gender had more complications only 12 (9.2%) had no complication whatsoever compared to the group with no hypertension where 29 (26%) had no complications on the male gender 6 (5%) had no any complication while 30 (27%) in the no hypertensive patients was free of complications.