Introduction:

COVID-19 pandemic compromised hypertensive patients monitoring in several aspects. This scenario emphasized telehealth strategies like phone consultation. mHealth is another emerging way to promote patient self-management through mobile devices. However, there is no significant information to prove its effectiveness. The purpose of this paper was to carry out an evidence-based systematic review on mobile phone or smartphone platforms’ role on therapeutic adherence of individuals with hypertension.

Methods:

The articles were obtained through bibliographic research on different scientific platforms using the MeSH terms ‘mobile’, ‘phone’, ‘hypertension’ and ‘adherence’. Studies were included according to the following PICOS model criteria: (P) adult individuals diagnosed with arterial hypertension, taking at least one antihypertensive drug; (I) reinforced therapeutic plan using a cell phone, landline or smartphone platform; (C) standard care; (O) changes in therapeutic adherence; (S) systematic reviews and randomized controlled clinical trials. The American Academy of Family Physicians Strength of Recommendation Taxonomy scale was used to assess levels of evidence and to assign the recommendation force.

Results:

Of the 729 initial articles, only seven studies were included in this review: one systematic review and six randomized controlled clinical trials. Although most studies reported somewhat heterogeneous and inconsistent results, they presented statistically significant results in terms of increasing therapeutic adherence. However, the risk of bias was relatively high.

Conclusions:

Current evidence is of moderate, inconsistent, and difficult to generalize quality, despite being favourable to the effectiveness of these platforms increasing therapeutic adherence in hypertensive patients (strength of recommendation B). Greater methodologic uniformity and adaptability are needed when assessing therapy adherence in order to increase comparability between studies and to analyse its evolution in a given population.

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