Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2003-2004, a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of US adults, Wong et al. studied the prevalence of hypertension and quality of its treatment in people with and without cardiovascular comorbidities such as coronary artery disease, stroke, diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, and peripheral artery disease. The overall prevalence of hypertension was 31.4%. In the asymptomatic population, the prevalence of hypertension was under 20% and ranged from 50 to 80% in patients with cardiovascular comorbidities. Among these high-risk people, the authors noted that a large number of subjects did not achieve their blood pressure goals, underlining the need to step up efforts to help these individuals achieve better blood pressure control. This paper was accompanied by an editorial by Theodore A. Kotchen who suggested that advancing age and inadequate blood pressure control might have been an underlying cause of cardiovascular comorbidities. Kotchen also mentioned the results of a similar investigation and noted that hypertension awareness has risen over the past decades, a topic that was not covered in the paper by Wong et al. The treatment gap between treatment guidelines and clinical practice was also mentioned and identified as an issue that should be addressed.
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