Hypertension control in Argentina, in the middle of a long road

Abstract

In Argentina, cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death and represent 1/3 of total mortality. In 2017, hypertension prevalence for inhabitants ≥18 years old was 36.3%, and its level of knowledge and control (<140/90 mm Hg) were 61% and 24%, respectively. Furthermore, 56% of people treated with antihypertensive drugs do not reach therapeutic goal. In addition to this, prevalence of other risk factors, such as sedentary lifestyle, overweight‐obesity, high blood glucose/diabetes, and high cholesterol, has worsened in the last 5 years. The governmental initiative "Less Salt More Life" intends to reduce salt consumption in the entire population and promoted a National Law, which establishes the progressive salt reduction in processed foods. This initiative is probably related to the reduction of salt use after cooking or sitting at the table, observed in the Risk Factors National Survey. Furthermore, previously published studies showed, in relatively small samples from Argentina, that populational blood pressure can be decreased and hypertension control can be improved using community‐based or multicomponent intervention programs. However, no specific designed national effort for hypertension control is now officially applied. In consequence, we believe that, in order to increase hypertension control, the effort should not focus on developing new strategies, but on quickly implementing and maintaining those local multicomponent interventions that have already proven to be effective.

Sodium and Salt Consumption in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Systematic-Review and Meta-Analysis of Population-Based Studies and Surveys

“…The search yielded 2350 results, and 2297 were excluded at the screening stage; thus, 53 were studied in detail. Finally, 15 reports (i.e., individual papers) were included in the systematic review providing results for 18 studies (Figure 1) [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. Two studies were excluded from meta-analysis (quantitative synthesis of results) because numeric results were not available, i.e., they only reported proportions or figures without the exact numbers [13,18].…”

“…Brazil contributed to the review with seven studies [11,14,15,[17][18][19][20], Chile with four [11,16,21,23] and Argentina with two [10,11]; whereas Barbados [9], Colombia [11], Ecuador [13], Peru [22] and Uruguay [12] contributed with one study each (Table 1). Three studies analyzed a nationally representative sample (Table 1) [9,15,21].…”

“…Six studies collected 24 h urine samples [9,12,14,19,22,23], while the others collected 12 h [17,18], overnight [10] or spot samples (Table 1) [11,15,16,20,21]. Eight studies used a formula (e.g., Kawasaki [25] or Tanaka [26]) to estimate 24 h sodium excretion (Table 1) [11,15,16,20,21].…”

May Measurement Month 2019: an analysis of blood pressure screening results from Argentina

“…The level of awareness and treatment among individuals with hypertension (81.1% and 77.7%, respectively) were also higher than those previously communicated in population-based samples. 9 These differences could be explained by selection bias because the MMM campaign did not include randomized population samples.…”

May Measurement Month 2018: an analysis of blood pressure screening results from Argentinean cohort

“…Argentina, with a population of more than 40 million people, does not escape from this problem, with ∼40% of the global mortality attributable to cardiovascular diseases. 4 The prevalence of hypertension in our country is approximately 33–36% 5 and making things even worse is that this main risk factor for morbidity and mortality has a high level of unawareness and very low degree of control among the population. 6 , 7 With this background, the Argentinian Society of Hypertension (SAHA) has, among its main objectives, the design and establishment of different strategies intended to improve the degree of knowledge and control of hypertension in our country.…”