[Evaluation of cardiovascular high risk population in specialist ambulatory care: ESA]

Arterial hypertension is the most common CV disease in the Czech Republic with estimated prevalence 35% among population aged 25 to 64 years. Although serious public health problem with significant medical and economic consequences the treatment of HT is currently unsatisfactory. Only 18.4% of patients with arterial HT reach goal BP. There are several factors responsible for this fact, among them low compliance of patients, low dosages of antihypertensive drugs used and low usage of the combination of antihypertensive drugs.

To obtain following data from the specialists ambulances (internists and cardiologists) regarding hypertensive patients: frequency of high risk hypertensive patients and proportion of patients with hypertension in whom BP is well controlled (target BP reached). Another goal of the study was to obtain data about pharmacological treatment of hypertensive patients.

National, multicenter, non-interventional, cross sectional, representative sample, one visit study.

Data of 19,821 patients with primary hypertension visited office-based internists and cardiologists was analysed. The average age was 64 +/- 12 years (range 19-99 years), 53% was women. The mean blood pressure of entire population was 138.5 +/- 15.1/81.7 +/- 9.1 mm Hg. There were high proportion of patients with well controlled blood pressure (BP below 140/90 mm Hg)--48% of the patients. Among those with diabetes the proportion of well controlled patients was much lower--only 11% of the patients. Regarding other cardiovascular risk factors the most common was hyperlipidaemia--66% of the patients, following by diabetes and smoking with 29 and 14% of the patients respectively. 8,444 (43%) of the patients suffered from the coronary artery diseases, 2,251 (11%) patients have experienced stroke or TIA and 1,601 (8%) patients had peripheral artery disease. Regarding antihypertensive therapy, only 21% of the population was treated by monotherapy. The most common was the combination of ACE inhibitors plus beta-blockers or triple-combination of ACE inhibitors plus diuretics plus beta-blockers.