OBJECTIVES: One in every three adults in Asia suffers from hypertension and the prevalence is increasing in many countries. Two-thirds of hypertension patients fail to successfully control blood pressure, mostly due to poor medication adherence. Therefore, improving medication adherence is crucial in the management of hypertension. The objective of this study is to investigate the adherence measurements used in hypertensive patients in Asia and the adherence level measured. METHODS: A structured literature review was conducted in PubMed using search terms including “adherence”, “hypertension” and search terms for Asian countries. Studies that investigated adherence to anti-hypertensive drugs in Asian countries from 2006 to 2016 and reported the adherence measurements used were included. RESULTS: A total of 388 articles were retrieved in the PubMed search, of which 54 studies were included for analysis. None of the studies used direct methods for adherence measurement. The most commonly used indirect method involved clinician assessment and self-report (61.1%); the most commonly used tools included self-administered questionnaire (SAQ, 31.5%), face-to-face interview (7.4%) and Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS, 9.3%). The second most commonly used indirect method involved secondary database analysis (33.3%); the scales used were medication possession rate (MPR, 20.4%) and cumulative medication adherence (CMA, 11.1%). Other studies used pill count (5.6%) to measure adherence indirectly. SAQ was mostly used in China and Korea. CMA was used only in Korea and MPR was only used in Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan. On average, studies that used MPR reported a higher population adherence compared with studies that used MMAS. Further analyses will be performed to investigate other associations between adherence level measured and tools/scales used. CONCLUSIONS: Adherence to anti-hypertensive drugs has been measured using different tools in Asian studies. A gold standard needs to be established as guidelines for adherence measurements so that study results can be compared more easily.