[Follow-up of systemic hypertension by nursing personnel]

The follow-up of cases with systemic hypertension (SH) is difficult to achieve due to poor medical-patient relationship. In order to improve this situation a mild hypertensive population was followed in an special clinic directed by a nurse, supervised by a physician, which imparted personalized attention to the patients. 164 patients, 57.6 +/- 10.5 (mean and standard deviation) years old with known hypertension of 10.6 +/- 5.9 years duration were followed for 14.0 +/- 5.2 months. 56.8% of those patients were treated with a diuretic and in the others a sympathetic inhibitor was added. Mean blood pressure before receiving treatment, during the last year of out-patient follow-up and during the follow-up imparted by the nurse clinic were 173.3 +/- 25.4 mm of Hg; 162.2 +/- 31.2 and 151 +/- 16.4 mg of Hg (n = 144, p - 0.001 between the first and any of the other values), respectively, for sistolic pressure and 105.9 +/- 12.9, 94.2 +/- 11.2 and 92.6 +/- 10.9 mm of Hg, respectively, for diastolic values. The average visits imparted were 5.3 for patient; 34.5% of patients consulted with the supervisor physician at least in one occasion. There were not hypertensive crises or deaths during the observation. The drop out rate was 12.1%.