High blood pressure affects twice as many Czechs as Western Europeans
They call it the "silent killer". It doesn't hurt, it has no symptoms. Many people have it for years without knowing. When its consequences finally become evident, damage is already done. I'm talking about high blood pressure. If uncontrolled, it can lead to stroke, heart attack, heart failure or kidney failure. The only way to tell if you have high blood pressure is to have your blood pressure checked regularly. Hypertension can be inherited or associated with various risk factors such as a high-cholesterol levels, obesity, diabetes, smoking, alcohol consumption, stress - and also old age. Doctor Renata Cifkova is the head of the Preventive Cardiology Department of the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine and also the chairwoman of the Czech Society for Hypertension. Pavla Horakova spoke to her earlier and began by asking her about hypertension figures in the Czech Republic.
"The prevalence of hypertension is very high. It affects about one third of the adult population aged 25-64 years. The prevalence of hypertension in the Czech Republic is about twice as high as in some Western European countries. One of the reasons for that is probably a very high prevalence of obesity that we have in our population affecting again about one third of the adult population and also a very unhealthy lifestyle."
And why is it so that only a proportion of hypertension sufferers are treated and only a small proportion of those who are treated are treated successfully?
"Generally, in all populations only two thirds of those who have hypertension are aware of their condition. Which means that one third of the hypertensive population is not aware of the disease. This is one reason, because they are not aware and therefore they are not treated. And the other reason is that only fifty percent of those who aware of hypertension are treated by drugs and are treated effectively. If we take into account the total number of patients with hypertension then we have only twenty percent of those who are labelled as hypertensive patients that have their blood pressure below 140/90 which are the goals for having hypertension controlled. This is a very general phenomenon, which can be seen also in other populations. The only difference is the very high prevalence of hypertension. So if we take into account all these facts, we have about twice as many people who are not controlled and have hypertension compared to Western Europe and this could be one of the explanations why we still have a very high cardiovascular mortality and morbidity."
