[Treatment strategies in essential arterial hypertension]

Essential hypertension is a very heterogeneous disease. The availability of antihypertensive drugs lowering blood pressure by various mechanisms allows most often to tailor the treatment, i.e. to find for each patient a drug regimen that is both efficient and well tolerated. Frequently medications given as monotherapy are not effective enough so that the use of drug combinations is required. When combined, low doses of antihypertensive agents are generally sufficient, so that tolerability is optimally preserved. Unfortunately many patients do not have their blood pressure controlled during antihypertensive therapy. These patients therefore do not benefit maximally from the cardiovascular protection afforded by blood pressure lowering. It is also imperative to correct all cardiovascular risk factors in each hypertensive patient. Such a multifactorial approach is known to improve effectively the prevention of cardiovascular diseases.