Missed opportunities for hypertension screening: a cross-sectional study, India
Sanjay Mohanty, Ashish Kumar Upadhyay, Prashant Shekhar, Fabrice Kämpfen, Owen O’Donnell, Jürgen Maurer
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To assess missed opportunities for hypertension screening at health facilities in India and describe systematic differences in these missed opportunities across states and sociodemographic groups. METHODS: We used nationally representative survey data from the 2017-2018 Longitudinal Ageing Study in India to estimate the proportion of adults aged 45 years or older identified with hypertension and who had not been diagnosed with hypertension despite having visited a health facility during the previous 12 months. We estimated age-sex adjusted proportions of missed opportunities to diagnose hypertension, as well as actual and potential proportions of diagnosis, by sociodemographic characteristics and for each state. FINDINGS: < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Opportunistic screening for hypertension has the potential to significantly increase detection of the condition and reduce sociodemographic and geographic inequalities in its diagnosis. Such screening could be a first step towards more effective and equitable hypertension treatment and control.