Published online before print February 19, 2007, doi: 10.1161/01.HYP.0000259106.77783.f8
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(Hypertension. 2007;49:773.)
© 2007 American Heart Association, Inc.
Editorial Commentaries |
Using Public Health Indicators to Measure the Success of Hypertension Control
From the Department of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology, Loyola University Medical School, Maywood, Ill.
Correspondence to Department of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology, Loyola University Medical School, 2160 S First Ave, Maywood, IL 60153. E-mail rcooper@lumc.edu
An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract. |
Hypertension is widely recognized as a public health menace but rarely treated as one. In many ways, the challenge of hypertension reflects a transition from classic public health strategies that have been applied to control microbial epidemics to a fully medicalized approach requiring individual doctor–patient encounters. One reason why hypertension has perhaps not been seen as a legitimate public health problem is the unavailability of good surveillance measures that can describe disease burden. Although we have abundant information about the relative risk associated with various levels of blood pressure and the benefit to be gained from treatment, it had not been possible until recently to relate levels of hypertension treatment and control in a specific population to rates of cardiovascular sequelae.
Reasonable evidence suggests that increased levels of treatment of cardiovascular (CV) risk factors have been associated with declines in CV mortality.1,2 The most recent estimates suggest that 
60% of the CV decline can be explained by a combination of primary and secondary prevention.2 Soon after antihypertensive therapy came into widespread use, the long-term decline in stroke mortality in the US increased from 1% to 2% per year.1 Although stroke occurrence has been known to vary widely among countries,3 there are inadequate data on blood pressure control from national surveys that have been collected in standardized fashion to assess fully its impact on CV disease rates. A comparison of the United States and Canada with several European countries, however, did suggest a strong relationship among mean blood pressure, the rate
Related Article:
Hypertension 2007 49: 799-805.