In Clinical

Follow this topic

Bookmark

Record learning outcomes

England has lost the advances in the prevention, diagnosis and management of hypertension it made during the early 2000s.

More than 5 million people may now have undiagnosed hypertension and 4.9 million may have diagnosed but poorly controlled hypertension, a new analysis suggests (writes Mark Greener).

The analysis included 67,334 adults who participated in the annual Health Survey for England between 2003 and 2021. Their mean age was 49 years; 51.9 per cent were female and 89.7 per cent were white.

Hypertension prevalence fell from 37.8 per cent in 2003 to 33.2 per cent in 2018, then climbed to 36.2 per cent in 2021. The proportion of people with diagnosed hypertension and controlled blood pressure rose from 47.3 per cent in 2003 to 63.1 per cent in 2011 but fell to 56.8 per cent in 2021. Undiagnosed hypertension rates dropped from 32.6 per cent in 2003 to 23.7 per cent in 2011 but rose to 32.4 per cent in 2021. 

Senior author and consultant in cardiovascular medicine and clinical pharmacology at Queen Mary University of London, Dr Ajay Gupta, has called for urgent action from policymakers and healthcare providers. 

“Despite early gains,” he said, “only 38.3 per cent of people with hypertension now have adequately controlled blood pressure – far below the envisioned 80 per cent target if trends in the improvement continued in [the] 2010s.”

He believes this shortfall may be a key driver of the recent rise in cardiovascular deaths.