Blood pressure control--slowly getting there through new strategies?

摘要

Current global estimates indicate that more than 25% of the adult population has diagnosed or undiagnosed hypertension (1), and as a consequence of that, cardiovascular disease and stroke is emerging as a major contributor to the global burden of death and disability (2,3). Also alarming is that the prevalence of hypertension is increasing (1), so that by 2025, the expected number of hypertensive patients in the world will be more than 1.5 billion. The majority of hypertensive patients today remain insufficiently controlled (4) and if current strategies of practice do not change, the majority of these 1.5 billion people will remain insufficiently controlled for their hypertension (5). Clearly, drastic measures have to be taken to improve the current situation and there is an urgent need to prepare health service providers as well as physicians for a global scenario containing even larger patient cohorts, possessing even more complicated and deranged risk-factor profiles to bring under control.