published 4 months, 22 days ago, submitted by
maria
4 months, 27 days ago abc.net.au — Hypertension is a silent condition – someone who has high blood pressure often doesn't know about it. But it's a major risk factor for coronary heart disease, stroke and kidney failure.
It's the biggest single contributor to poor health in Australia, and nowhere more so than in Australia's rural community, where studies suggest it's not only more common, but less successfully treated than in the cities.
In fact, researchers at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales put the prevalence of hypertension in one rural community at a whopping 58 per cent of 50 to 75-year-olds, based on a study recently published in the journal Clinical and Experimental Hypertension.
The researchers studied a group of 674 people from in and around Albury, a large town in New South Wales, who answered an advertisement offering a free blood pressure check. Researchers quizzed them about their past medical history and treatment, and took their blood pressure.
Thirty-seven per cent had been diagnosed with hypertension in the past and 21 per cent were found to have undiagnosed hypertension.
This high prevalence of hypertension, at 58 per cent, is considerably higher than the average for Australian adults, which other studies have put at 28 to 42 per cent, but which is probably closer to around 30 per cent, the researchers say.
Of the Albury participants who were known to have hypertension, only about 43 per cent were actually being treated with blood pressure lowering medication. And of these, fewer than half had a normal blood pressure – defined as 140 mm Hg (systolic) and 80 mm Hg (diastolic) or lower. In other words, less than half were getting optimal treatment.
Now, there was some study bias in this group. The average age was in the early sixties (an age group more likely to have hypertension), and the participants were 'self-selecting' – that is, they volunteered to take part, possibly because they thought their blood pressure would be high.
And some in the study may simply have had high blood pressure on the day, but not at other times. So the figure of 58 per cent is probably artificially high.
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