Ups and downs of conducting a national representative survey on hypertension during pandemic time: main results of SEPHAR IV

Abstract

Objectives: This national representative survey sought to assess hypertension's prevalence, awareness, treatment and control in Romania. Methods: A representative sample (by age, sex and residence) of 1477 Romanian adults (51.19 ± 16.61 years, range 18–80 years, 59.9% women) was multimodally evaluated during two study visits. Hypertension was defined as SBP at least 140 mmHg and/or DBP at least 90 mmHg or previously diagnosed hypertension, regardless of BP. Awareness was defined by knowledge of previous hypertension diagnosis or of current use of antihypertensive treatment. Treatment was defined by antihypertensive medication taken at least 2 weeks prior to enrolment. Control was defined as SBP less than 140 mmHg and DBP less than 90 mmHg at both visits in treated hypertensive patients. Results: Hypertension prevalence was 46% (n = 680) consisting of 81.02% (n = 551) known hypertensive patients and 18.98% (n = 129) newly diagnosed hypertensive patients. Awareness, treatment and control of hypertension were: 81% (n = 551), 83.8% (n = 462) and 39.2% (n = 181). Conclusion: Despite numerous pandemic-related obstacles in conducting a national survey, SEPHAR IV updates hypertension epidemiological data of a high-cardiovascular-risk Eastern-European population. This study confirms previous predictions of hypertension prevalence, treatment and control, which remain unfavourable because of unsatisfactory control of promoting factors.

An Actual Perspective on I1-Imidazoline Agonists in Blood Pressure Control. Results of a Multicentric Observational Prospective Study

“…Accordingly, four out of five people with high BP are inadequately treated, despite extremely varied and relatively easily accessible therapeutic resources (4). In the last decades, the therapeutic control of HTN made a slow progress compared with awareness and the proportion of treated hypertensive patients (5,6), reaching about 50% across Europe (7) and even less in Romania, an East-European country, where it only achieved 39% based on the latest available records (8). This problem requires vigorous actions if the persistence of high BP under treatment is associated with an augmented cardiovascular risk (9,10).…”