[The cost/benefit of antihypertensive therapy]

The prevalence of arterial hypertension is very high in the general population, ranging from 10% in people between 20 and 30 years of age to more than 50% in the elderly. However the great majority of hypertensive subjects belong to the mild hypertension range and are at relatively low risk for cerebrovascular and cardiac events. As it is impossible at the present time to identify subjects who are particularly inclined to develop complications, all hypertensives are put under treatment in the attempt to avoid a few events in a very vast population. This implies that enormous health care resources have to be allocated. In the present article a number of economic evaluation techniques of hypertension are reviewed with special focus on methods combining quantity and quality of life.