New European Guidelines on Treatment of Hypertension

New guidelines for the management of arterial hypertension have been issued at the European Society of Hypertension (ESH) meeting in Milan, Italy. The recommendations, which were drawn up jointly by task forces from ESH and the European Society of Cardiology, also appear in the Journal of Hypertension.

Co-chair of the task forces, Dr Guy de Backer (University Hospital, Ghent, Belgium) told heartwire the guidelines are essentially an update to 2003 recommendations. The new document is 82 pages long, and lists 825 references, reflecting the vast amount of data published on the subject of hypertension in the past 4 years, he noted.

Asked to pick out highlights for heartwire, de Backer said this was a difficult task, "as there has been no one dramatic change, rather small changes in each area. The most important thing is that this is an update and the numerous references have been critically evaluated. We have kept the general framework and added what we think is most important from the literature."

For the clinician, the main messages can be found in a number of boxes in the paper, which contain position statements, he noted. "All you need to do is look at the position statements in the boxes, and only read the text if you want more detail." The task forces are working hard to produce a pocket version of the new guidelines for release at the ESC meeting in Vienna in September, he added.
source:www.medscape.com