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(Hypertension. 2004;44:389.)
© 2004 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorial Commentaries

Hypertension in the 21st Century

The Tide Is Rising; Our Daze Must End

From the Department of Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston.

Correspondence to Brent M. Egan, MD, Medical University of South Carolina, 96 Jonathan Lucas St, CSB 826H, Charleston, SC 29464. E-mail eganbm@musc.edu

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

Epidemiologists can sometimes mesmerize with numbers that, while important, seem inanimate, distant, and impersonal. Not this time. Dr Larry Fields et al have brought the growing hypertension epidemic to life in this issue of Hypertension.¹ The clarion call has been sounded; the tide is rising. Whereas the US population grew 13.2% from 1990 to 2000, the estimated number of hypertensives rose 30%, which is more than twice the rate of population growth. As the authors note, factors contributing to the disproportionately faster growth of hypertension include an aging population with an expanding girth. Improvements in medical care for hypertensive patients leading to longer survival also appear to increase the opportunity for an individual to become hypertensive.

Of equal or greater importance, the authors provide information that is vital for determining the societal impact of hypertension and for guiding efforts directed at its prevention, treatment, and control and for directing the allocation of resources required to achieve key goals. Their demographic analyses identified groups by age, gender, and ethnicity that have the greatest absolute burden of hypertension. Of interest, the greatest number of men with hypertension (mode) occurs in the age band of 45 to 54 years, whereas for women the mode is present at age above 75 years. White Americans account for more than 70% of hypertensives, which is proportional to the general population; a fact which may be underappreciated. As expected, black Americans are over-represented in the hypertensive compared with the general population, whereas Hispanic Americans are under-represented . . . [Full Text of this Article]