TUESDAY, Feb. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Awareness, treatment and control rates of hypertension improved in England from 2003 to 2006, according to the results of a health survey published online Feb. 9 in Hypertension.
Emanuela Falaschetti, of University College London in the United Kingdom, and colleagues conducted a study of a nationally representative cohort of 8,834 adults aged 16 years and older in 2003 and a cohort of 7,478 adults in 2006.
There was an increase in the percentage of the cohort with awareness of hypertension from 62 percent in 2003 to 66 percent in 2006, although only the increase in women was significant, rising from 64 percent to 71 percent, the investigators found. The proportion of women who were treated for hypertension rose from 52 percent to 62 percent, but the numbers rose less steeply in men, from 43 percent to 47 percent, the researchers report. Control rates for treated patients also improved, from 44 percent to 53 percent for women, and from 48 percent to 52 percent in men, the authors note.
"Despite the shortcomings of any cross-sectional survey to evaluate hypertension management, the data from this large nationally representative sample from England represent more evidence of an ever-improving approach to hypertension management, which, had it not occurred between 2003 and 2006, is likely to have cost between 4,000 and 8,000 fatal or non-fatal cardiovascular events," the authors write.
An author of the study reports a financial relationship with the pharmaceutical industry.
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