Hypertension and cardiovascular risk: General aspects.

Hypertension is the strongest or one of the strongest risk factors for almost all different cardiovascular diseases acquired during life, including coronary disease, left ventricular hypertrophy and valvular heart diseases, cardiac arrhythmias including atrial fibrillation, cerebral stroke and renal failure. The continuous relationship between blood pressure and cardiovascular and renal events makes the distinction between high normal blood pressure and hypertension based on arbitrary cut-off values for blood pressures. Overall the prevalence of hypertension in different European countries appears to be around 30-45% of the general population, with a steep increase with ageing. The prevention of cardiovascular disease and treatment recommendations should be related to quantification of total cardiovascular risk which could be estimated from several different models. However the impact of age on risk is so strong that young adults (particularly women) are unlikely to reach high-risk levels even when they have more than one major risk factor and a clear increase in relative risk. Therefore age-adjusted models, models assessing relative risks compared to others of same age and models including thorough assessments of target organ damage and ambulatory 24h blood pressure are needed together with national models because of the large variations between countries.