Despite accessible diagnostics and treatment of hypertension, a high proportion of patients worldwide remain unaware of their diagnosis, and even more remain untreated. Several studies suggest that absence of comorbidities is a predictive factor for unawareness and consequently non-treatment of hypertension. There are only a few studies that have assessed the hypertension prevalence and management among apparently healthy individuals.
The aim of the study was to assess and compare hypertension prevalence, awareness, treatment and control among apparently healthy individuals, patients with internal diseases, and patients with non-internal diseases. Data from standardised blood pressure measurements conducted during the Czech European Health Examination Survey and information on health status and health care use collected during the Czech European Health Interview Survey were analyzed.
We focused on participants aged 25β Data were weighted on sex and age to ensure an appropriate sex and age structure of the population. The final eligible sample consisted of participants. The prevalence of hypertension was Awareness was Treatment was Among apparently healthy respondents Differences in hypertension control were not statistically significant.
Generally, our data show a discordance in hypertension management within the Czech population. Apparently healthy individuals are the least aware of their diagnosis and the highest proportion of them remain untreated. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability: Data EHES are provided only after signing a data handling agreement between the National Institute of Public health and the entity that will work with the data.
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Hypertension is a serious medical condition with increasing prevalence worldwide. It is estimated that As an important risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, which is the leading cause of death worldwide according to the World Health Organization WHO , hypertension is a significant public health challenge [ 3 , 4 ].
