Survival Analysis for Hypertension among Adults Aged 18 Years and Above: A Case Study of Kerugoya Level 4 Hospital from 2018 to 2021

Hypertension is among the several chronic diseases in human life and people have learned to live with it but ensure it is in good control. Hypertension can either be defined as systolic blood pressure (SBP) of 140mm of Hg or greater and/or diastolic blood pressure (DBP) of 90mm of Hg or greater, in simple terms hypertension is any blood pressure that is greater than 140/90mm of Hg. This research was set to investigate time to control hypertension among adults. Survival analysis of 66 patients with hypertension, adults aged 18 years and above, was carried out to estimate the time taken to control hypertension and assess the association as well as the impacts of the covariates namely: age, sex, hypertension stage, and diabetes status of the patients. Descriptive research through a retrospective cohort study was used to review the records of 66 patients sampled from the total number of hypertensive adults in Kerugoya Hospital by the use of a simple random sampling technique. Descriptive statistics analysis was done using a non-parametric method, Kaplan Meier (KM) method to estimate overall time to control by fitting survival function on the event, while Cox Proportional hazards model was used for multivariate analysis to assess the impact of the variables and to determine the adjusted hazard ratio. Log-rank test also compared time to control curves for different variables. Data analysis was done by the use of statistical software (R – Studio and SPSS) whose output shown that hypertension stage was the only significant factor for time to control hypertension with a p-value of (1.77E-05) while the rest of the covariates sex, age and diabetes status were insignificant. Log rank test output showed that there was no difference in the control curve for both sex and age while as there is a significant difference in the control curve for both hypertension stage and diabetes status.