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Treatment preferences, return visit planning and factors affecting hypertension practice amongst general
1Department of Family Medicine, Akademiska Sjukhuset, Uppsala, Sweden.
Objectives:
To study clinical practice and attitudes in hypertension care amongst general practitioners (GPs) and hospital internal medicine specialists.
Design:
Mailed case report questionnaires.
Subjects:
Ninety GPs and 69 internal medicine specialists at randomly selected primary health care centres and hospital outpatient departments.
Main Outcome Measures:
Case-bound treatment preferences, treatment goals and return visit planning, and views on factors influencing practice.
Results:
The participation rate was 84% and 70%, for GPs and internal medicine specialists, respectively. GPs more often proposed nonpharmacological therapy (P < 0.05), solely and as a complementary treatment, and prescribed more calcium antagonists (P < 0.001), whilst internal medicine specialists prescribed more ACE inhibitors (P < 0.001). Personal experience guides practice more than national consensus and economy, more so with increasing time since specialization.
Conclusions:
GPs and internal medicine specialists in Sweden report a hypertension practice closely related to each others' and to the intentions of national guidelines.