RESEARCH ARTICLE
Appropriate Cardiovascular Prevention is Not Implemented in Diabetic Hypertensive Patients Treated in General Practice
Juha Varis*, 1, Helja Savola1, Risto Vesalainen2, Ilkka Kantola1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2011Volume: 4
First Page: 18
Last Page: 22
Publisher Id: TOHYPERJ-4-18
DOI: 10.2174/1876526201104010018
Article History:
Received Date: 18/02/2011Revision Received Date: 21/04/2011
Acceptance Date: 22/04/2011
Electronic publication date: 2/6/2011
Collection year: 2011
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Introduction of guidelines and more effective cardiovascular prevention have taken place in Finland. This study clarified whether treatment of the Finnish diabetics reflects these changes. Antihypertensive, lipemic and diabetic care of diabetics in Finnish general practice was analyzed nationwide by using a questionnaire. Subjects that participated in the study were consecutive hypertensive patients that had met their general practitioners during a given week in 2006. Only 9.4 % of the diabetics reached the blood pressure target below 130/80 mmHg. Fifty-six % of the patients reached the target of glycocylated haemoglobin (GHbA1c) below 7.0 %. The low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol was below 2.5 mmol/l (96.7 mg/dl) in 43.9 % of the patients. In multivariate model, young age and high GHbA1c associated with high diastolic blood pressure. Fewer patients with GHbA1c > 7 % reached the target pressure below 140/90 mmHg than those with GHbA1c ≤7.0 % (p<0.05), but no difference was found if the target was below 130/80 mmHg. Neither the number of antihypertensive agents nor home blood pressure monitoring did affect the blood pressure. Blood pressure control of the treated Finnish diabetics was poor. Metabolic targets were more commonly reached than the blood pressure target but still too seldom. The cardiovascular prevention is not implemented in Finnish diabetic patients treated in general practice.
