[Hypertension short message service].

Hypertension Short Message Service is a new tool for disease management aimed at improving the success of the doctor's daily routine in hypertension treatment both in terms of the quality of hypertension assessment and concerning the efficacy of treatment. At present there is a wide and disappointing difference between the results of treatment in routine work [1] and in clinical trials [2, 3] even when the same cohort of patients is treated by the same therapists. The efficacy rate in daily routine is about 20-35% as compared to 70-85% during trials. Assuming this gap is due to differences in disease management we integrated short message service and Internet applications into a new hypertension management tool (Blutdrucksms). According to our registry data "Blutdrucksms" is very successful: More than 80% of our hypertensive patients were treated to target. In June 2008, we implemented the SMS-Blood Pressure Protocol, and in October 2010, we analyzed the data of all "Blutdrucksms" users available in our registry. By then a total of 568 patients - 44% female and 56% male - had sent their self-recorded blood pressure readings as short messages to the SMS-Center; 75% of these patients had had at least one organ damage (left ventricular hypertrophy, increase in intima media thickening or carotid plaque). Mean casual blood pressure, recorded before enrolment into the SMS-program, was 152/83. It had improved to 136/80 mmHg by October 2010. The mean of the self-recorded blood pressures of the last month of participation was 128/76 mmHg and a heart rate of 69 beats per minute; 85% of all hypertensive patients had their pressures at treatment goal. Thus, we assume that "Blutdrucksms" is an excellent tool to improve the efficacy of antihypertensive disease management in routine work. We assume that the success is due to the enhanced communication between patient and doctor via SMS. As we are aware of the weakness of registry analysis we try to set up a controlled prospective study to compare "Blutdrucksms" users to non-users.