Cardiovascular Diseases

Hypertension is quantitatively the most important risk factor for premature cardiovascular disease, being more common than cigarette smoking, dyslipidemia, and diabetes, which are other major risk factors. Hypertension accounts for an estimated 54 percent of all strokes and 47 percent of all ischemic heart disease events globally. Since hypertension does not evoke direct symptoms and may thus remain unnoticed by the individual patient it has been named the ‘silent killer’.

Hypertension increases the risk for a variety of cardiovascular diseases, including stroke, coronary artery disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and peripheral vascular disease with coronary disease in men and stroke in women being typical first cardiovascular events noted after hypertension onset. In view of the evidence that the hypertension incidence and hypertension related mortality rates are rising even in younger people, greater attention must be given to prevention, diagnosis and treatment of this disease.