Hypertension research : official journal of the Japanese Society of Hypertension
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Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
The therapeutic importance of home blood pressure assessment and combination antihypertensive therapy for achieving target blood pressure control: Ibaraki hypertension assessment trial.
Tight blood pressure (BP) control is important for the prevention of cardiovascular disease in hypertensive patients. A cross-sectional study of 2339 patients from 101 clinics and hospitals in Ibaraki Prefecture was performed to evaluate BP control with the patients' current antihypertensive medication. Group A (n=892) included high-risk hypertensive patients with at least one of the following risk factors: diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease or a history of myocardial infarction. ⋯ Although the target BP should be lower in Group A (given their comorbidities), the absolute BP value and the number of medications were similar to the other groups. In conclusion, we demonstrated that physicians should treat hypertension more intensively with a combination of more than two antihypertensive drugs, using a high dose to achieve the target BP. In addition, it is important to teach hypertensive patients the clinical importance of monitoring their BP at home and the need to achieve home BP targets.