Efecto de una intervención educativa multidisciplinaria sobre la calidad de vida en pacientes hipertensos

Objective: Compare the effect of a multidisciplinary educational intervention versus the conventional management in the hypertensive patients’ quality of life, body mass index and blood pressure. Design: Experimental of educative intervention. Methods: from March to October, 2005, it was made a multidisciplinary educational intervention in a primary care unit. The participating group included family doctors, nutritionists, social workers and a specialist in mental health. The experimental group received the intervention that consisted of five sessions during three months; it was evaluated quality of life, body mass index and blood pressure. Student’s t-test was used to determine the differences between groups, the p Results: 25 patients were randomly assigned to the experimental group and 25 to the control group. In the experimental group evaluation presented a better global result of 10 points in their quality of life (p=0.001), the blood pressure decreased in 10 mmHg of the average (p=0.001), the body mass index decreased only in the experimental group in 1 kg/mt2 (p=0.001). Conclusion: the multidisciplinary participation had a better impact in the quality of life and in the blood pressure control.