Assessing antihypertensive treatment by real life data.

摘要

In the past decade the perception has grown that information on antihypertensive treatment needs to be extended beyond that offered by clinical trials with a controlled design. This is because, although providing reliable data on the ability of a given antihypertensive drug or treatment regimen to lower an elevated blood pressure (BP) and achieve BP control with an acceptable safety and tolerability profile, controlled clinical trials are performed in conditions that are very different from those characterizing medical practice. To make few examples, in order to limit confounders and favour an appropriate data interpretation in clinical trials the demographic and clinical characteristics of the patients exposed to the treatment under investigation are much more homogeneous than the highly diversified ones typical of the population exposed to the same treatment after it enters the therapeutic market.