Prevalence and Selected Risk Factors Associated with Hypertension among Adults in Ogbia Town, Bayelsa State, Nigeria: A Community Based Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

This study determines the prevalence and some factors associated with hypertension among adults residing for the past three years and above in Ogbia town, Bayelsa State. Methods: The method adopted for this study was a cross-sectional design to select all 234 consented participants within the ages of 30-60 years and above using simple random technique. Digital blood pressure instrument (Omron) was used to take the blood pressure from the left arm in a sitting position; bathroom weight scale, structured questionnaire etc were among the instrument used to obtain all required data for this study. Results: The outcome from this study shows that adult within the ages of 30-39yrs (36.8%) and 50-59yrs (17.5%) make-up the highest and least population among the considered adults male and female in this study. Trading (22.2%) and civil service work (22.2%) was their main occupation followed by farming (17.1%) and artisan (4.7%) as the least. The respondent’s monthly income was mostly between 30,000-50,000 (32.0%) naira. The blood pressure of the participants statistically shows significant p-value ≤0.00 pre-hypertension of 134/84mmHg with a percentage difference of 21.84% among the male adults compared with the females of 127/66mmHg systolic and diastolic blood pressures respectively. The BMI among the males (26.08kg/m²) was also significantly (≤0.00) higher than their female (21.79kg/m²) counterparts. The percentage prevalence of overall hypertension among the adults was 29.1% and 76.5% pre-hypertension. The associated factors identified with the participant’s elevated blood pressure were regular excessive salt (78.2%) and alcoholic (63.2%) consumption intake followed by stress (76.9%), overweight (26.08 kg/m²), smoking (28.6%) and lack of regular exercise while some major identifiable symptoms associated with hypertension among participants with high blood pressure during measurement was frequent headache (82.5%), blurred vision (76.5%), dizziness (76.1%) and fatigue (74.0%) respectively. Conclusion: Health workers in the community in collaboration with the state ministry of health should address the knowledge gap on excessive consumption of alcohol and salt intake by creating awareness campaign measures and seminar presentations to the adult residents of Ogbia town on the importance of moderation in dietary and sedentary life style habits.