Jung Ah Lee1, Woo Sang Kim1, Moon Jung Bae1, Young-Sik Kim1, Han Jin Oh2, Sang Yeoup Lee3, Chul-Min Kim4, Dong Hyeok Shin5, Seong-Ho Han6, Kyung-Hwan Cho7

1Department of Family Medicine, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul,2Department of Family Medicine, Kwandong University College of Medicine, Gangneung, 3Department of Family Medicine, Pusan National niversity Yangsan Hospital, Pusan National University School of Medicine,Yangsan, 4Department of Family Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, TheCatholic University College of Medicine, Seoul, 5Department of Family Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, 6Department of Family Medicine, Dong-A University College of Medicine, Busan, 7Department of Family Medicine, Korea University Anam Hospital, Seoul, Korea


Background: For the effective management of hypertension, drug adherence and life style modification are important. We investigated the effects of mobile phone text‐message reminders on compliance and life style modification in patients with hypertension.
Methods: The study was performed at family medicine outpatient clinics at 15 hospitals in South Korea from July 2008 to June 2010. Study subjects included 1,449 patients who were all prescribed candesartan cilexetil. Patients were randomly divided into two groups‐ mobile phone text‐message reminder group and control group. In the reminder group, contents of text messages were recommendations for antihypertensive adherence, exercise, low salt diet, and reduction of weight and alcohol. In the control group, the date of next visit was sent at 10 week. Mobile phone text-messages were sent at 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 weeks by the coordinating center. Thereafter, they were followed up for 12 weeks. Chi-square test was performed to compare compliance and performance indexes of the two groups.
Results: The reminder group had 719 (49.6%) patients vs. 730 (50.4%) patients in the control group. Attendance rate were 92.8% for the reminder group and 94.7% for the control group (P=0.14). 94.7% of the reminder group and 94.0% of the control group took their medication regularly (P=0.59). The target blood pressure was attained in 75.8% of the reminder group and 75.4% of the control group (P=0.87). Similarly, rates of weight loss, decreased alcohol use, increased physical activity and a low salt diet showed no significant differences between the two groups.
Conclusions: In our study, mobile phone text reminders did not show to have any significant positive effect on the management of hypertension.
Korean J Health Promot 2014;14(1):1-8

Keywords: Hypertension, Compliance, Mobile phone text message