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[Influence of risk factors and pharmacological treatment on mortality in patients with essential hypertension]
1Departamento de Medicina, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Insights
Hypertensive patients on beta blockers or diuretics had higher mortality than those on calcium channel blockers or ACE inhibitors. This highlights the importance of choosing appropriate antihypertensive medications for better patient outcomes.
Area of Science:
- Cardiology
- Pharmacology
- Public Health
Context:
- Hypertension management guidelines suggest newer agents are safer, but evidence for reduced cardiovascular mortality is limited.
- Essential hypertension patients were followed in an outpatient clinic, receiving various antihypertensive treatments based on physician judgment.
Purpose:
- To investigate the relationship between cardiovascular risk factors, blood pressure control, drug treatments, and mortality in hypertensive patients.
Summary:
- A study followed 339 hypertensive patients (aged 33-80) for nearly 10 years. Patients received beta blockers, diuretics, calcium antagonists, or ACE inhibitors, all lowering blood pressure similarly.
- Mortality was higher in patients with prior angina, diabetes, or myocardial infarction. Crucially, those on beta blockers or diuretics showed increased mortality compared to those on calcium antagonists or ACE inhibitors, even after adjusting for other risk factors.
Impact:
- Findings suggest that certain antihypertensive drug classes (beta blockers, diuretics) may be associated with higher mortality in hypertensive patients compared to others (calcium antagonists, ACE inhibitors).
- This research underscores the need for careful consideration of medication choice in hypertension management to potentially improve patient survival and reduce cardiovascular events.
Background:
The V JNC consensus stated that although new antihypertensive agents, such as angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors and calcium channel blockers, are considered safer drugs, there is no firm evidence from large controlled trials that these drugs are associated with a lower cardiovascular mortality.
Aim:
To study the association between cardiovascular risk factors, blood pressure levels, pharmacological treatment and mortality in a group of hypertensive patients followed at an hypertension outpatient clinic.
Patients And Methods:
Patients with essential hypertension were treated with different antihypertensive medications, according to physicians criteria, and controlled until death or loss from follow up. Causes of death were obtained from hospital records and death certificates. Survival was analyzed using life tables, comparisons between groups of patients were done using chi square or a Cox's proportional hazards model.
Results:
Three hundred thirty-nine hypertensive patients aged 33 to 80 years old were followed for a mean period of 9.8 +/- 4.9 years. Eighty-six were treated with beta blockers, 64 with diuretics, 133 with calcium antagonists and 56 with ACE inhibitors. Blood pressure dropped similarly with all medications. During follow up, 79 patients died. Life table analysis showed that patients with a history of angina, diabetes or myocardial infarction had higher mortality rates. Similarly, patients treated with beta blockers and diuretics had higher mortality than patients treated with calcium antagonists or angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors. The proportional hazards model showed that the effect of treatment modality persisted after correction for the other risk factors for mortality.
Conclusions:
In this series of hypertensive patients, those treated with beta blockers or diuretics had higher mortality rates than those receiving calcium channel antagonists or angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors.
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