Impact of perceived self-efficacy among hypertensives in adapting to low salt diet

Background: Hypertension is a crucial health problem worldwide, and its snowballing epidemiology demands stern caution to increase the focus on this silent disease. Evidence exists that a considerable decline in salt consumption decreases blood pressure (BP) by around 5–7 mm of Hg systolic, in patients with increased BP. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among known hypertensive patients attending a health-care setting for routine check-up. This included patients of both genders, diagnosed with hypertensive at least 3 months prior, irrespective of their adherence to medication. Thus, convenient sampling was used to recruit participants after obtaining informed consent. The participants, who did not consent or cases of emergency such as myocardial infarction, malignant hypertension or arrhythmias and association with confirmed diabetes mellitus, were excluded. The study tool consisted of prevalidated and semistructured interview schedule.Results: Median (inter-quartile range) age of the study participants was 60 (15) years with 59% of the population constituting of females. The consumption of dietary sodium was observed to be 2–4 g/day among 74.3% (78) of the study participants, and >5 g among 22.8% (23) of the study participants. Nearly 70% of the participants had higher to moderate perceived self-efficacy scores indicating an overall higher self-efficacy among participants in adapting to the practice of salt restriction. Perceived self-efficacy scores negatively correlated with dietary sodium intake by Spearman's correlation (rho = −0.667, P < 0.001). Conclusion: The perceived self-efficacy scores of the participants showed a strong negative correlation with the dietary sodium intake, this may be an indication of need for self-motivation and patient participation in the control of factors such as restricted salt intake in patients with hypertension and warrants further research.