Is there a place for the electronic monitoring of compliance in the management of hypertensive patients?
As mentioned above, poor adherence to treatment can be observed in patients with well-controlled blood pressure as well as in patients with uncontrolled hypertension [17]. Nevertheless, it is mainly in uncontrolled patients that non-compliance becomes a real clinical issue because it represents a potential cause of resistant hypertension or treatment failures. When occurring in well-controlled patients, low compliance may only reflect the fact that these patients are perhaps being overtreated since they do not need the complete treatment to lower their blood pressure. We have evaluated whether monitoring compliance electronically may identify and improve compliance in patients with resistant hypertension (average blood pressure 156/106 mmHg with treatment) [22]. A total of 41 patients who were resistant to a regimen of three drugs were studied prospectively. Patients were informed that their currently prescribed drugs were to be provided in electronic monitors for the following 2 month
