Antihypertensive treatment. Considerations beyond blood pressure control

Treatment of patients with mild to moderate essential hypertension is now commonly undertaken. Clinical trials have shown a marked decrease in strokes in treated hypertensive patients. But despite reports of decreases in coronary deaths in some trials, the overall incidence of coronary events has been largely unaffected. This disappointing outcome has raised interesting issues. The patients in comparative placebo groups often do better than expected in formal trials; apart from the benefits of lifestyle changes, many of these patients appear to normalize their blood pressures during the trial. This latter effect can be due to erroneous diagnoses of hypertension at the start of the study, and this partially dilutes the likelihood of differences in outcome between the placebo- and actively treated patients. Optimal control of blood pressure is difficult to define, and controversies exist concerning whether pressures have been decreased insufficiently or excessively in clinical trials; it has been argued, too, that systolic as well as diastolic hypertension should be the target of treatment. Inadvertent treatment-induced metabolic abnormalities, especially in blood lipids, glucose, and electrolytes can weaken the antihypertensive benefits. Failure to deal with concurrent risk factors including smoking and left ventricular hypertrophy also could explain the absence of a decrease in coronary events. Newer classes of antihypertensive agents offer the potential to address these concerns and improve the cardiovascular prognosis of treated hypertensive patients.