Difficulties in achieving arterial hypertension control

Our study aims to examine the effectiveness of arterial hypertension treatment on arterial pressure values in a group of people, by gender and age.

We performed an analytical prospective study, from 2007 to 2009, that included 2266 people; 674 subjects (397 women and 277 men) were diagnosed with essential systemic arterial hypertension, according to ESH (European Society of Hypertension) criteria. Medium age was 49 years. Therapy applied to all diagnosed patients consisted in: general measures (lifestyle modifications) and pharmacological treatment. Medication regimens implied: one agent (single drug therapy: inhibitors of angiotensin converting enzyme or angiotensin receptors blockers), two, three or more combined drugs (we used a combination of inhibitors of angiotensin converting enzyme or angiotensin receptors blockers and diuretics, beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers). Patients were followed up at 1 month, 3 and 6 month from the beginning of the study. Statistics used was EpiInfo6.

Hypertension control was obtained for 33.38% of all patients; a better control was noticed for feminine gender (35.52%) over masculine gender (30.33%); distribution on age group showed the best control of the disease for the group aged 41 to 60 years old (19.92%) over those aged under 40 years (1.93%) and over 60 years (12.17%).

Patient's poor compliance to treatment generates a suboptimal hypertension control, emphasizing that efforts for achieving goal blood pressure should continue.