Compliance with antihypertensive therapy.

Poor compliance with antihypertensive therapy is a major cause of unsatisfactory blood pressure control. The doctor has a key role in all steps that lead the patient to adopt a treatment and to take it as prescribed lifelong. Compliance with therapy is a parameter which is difficult to assess. There is often an important mismatch between the subjective views of physicians and patients regarding long-term drug taking. Electronic monitoring of compliance represents a valuable method to evaluate the "real time" compliance of the patient. Discussing a compliance recording with a patient may help to identify and solve problems linked with everyday adherence to antihypertensive treatment. Improving compliance is an important task not only for the doctors, but also for all healthcare providers.