Therapeutical inertia in hypertension treatment

Abstract

Arterial hypertension is a civilization disease. According to
the recent studies it concerns about 9.5 million people in
Poland, and among people throughout the world this
number is estimated to be more than a billion. Prevalence
of hypertension is associated with an increased risk of complications,
such as heart disease, stroke, chronic kidney
disease or ophthalmic complications. The treatment of hypertension
absorbs a serious part of the appropriations intended
for health protection in different countries. However,
despite the continued progress taking place in the
diagnosis and treatment of hypertension and increasing
the sums that are spent by governments and the funds of
the health protection, treatment results are unsatisfactory.
The WOBASZ study evaluated several parameters related
to the occurrence and treatment of arterial hypertension in
all provinces in Poland determined that the percentage of
patients with well-controlled hypertension was 10% in men
and 16% in women, while according to NATPOL 2011
survey effectiveness of blood pressure control among hypertensive
patients in Poland is 26%.
One of the reasons of low blood pressure control is phenomenon,
called therapeutical inertia (TI). It is defined
as the treating physician failure in achieving the goals of
management, related to the lack of action to increase the
dose of already used medication and/or to add another
preparation. TI concerns not only the treatment of hypertension,
but also dyslipidemia or diabetes treatment.
The goals to be achieved in the treatment of these diseases have been exactly defined and effective treatment is
widely available.