High blood pressure has become an Irish 'epidemic'

Cardiovascular professor warns of a lack of awareness of the condition and inability to manage hypertension properly

ONLY ONE in five people with high blood pressure has it checked monthly, a third say they sometimes forget to take their medication, while over half are not concerned they have the condition, according to new research.

The findings, based on a survey of 1,000 people, were announced at the launch of a national awareness campaign by Novartis at the Royal College of Physicians in Dublin yesterday to coincide with World Hypertension Day.

Of those surveyed, 19 per cent said they suffered from hypertension themselves while 38 per cent had family members with the condition. Well over half the participants (63 per cent) were aged over 35.

Of those who suffer from hypertension, more than half have another medical condition. Older people were found to be more prone to high blood pressure, with only 7 per cent of adults in the 35-49 age group with the condition, compared with 43 per cent of over-65s.

The majority (86 per cent) said they had a good understanding of the need to manage blood pressure and the health risks of not doing so, and four in five claimed to have reduced their blood pressure to normal levels.

However, according to Prof Eoin O’Brien, vice-president of the Irish Heart Foundation and professor of cardiovascular pharmacology at the Conway Institute, UCD, lack of awareness and an inability to manage hypertension was a huge problem.

Welcoming the campaign, he said high blood pressure had become “an epidemic” in Ireland and a “serious threat” on an international scale, causing strokes, heart attacks and was now linked to dementia.

“Fifty per cent of adults don’t know they have high blood pressure and of those aware they have it, 50 per cent are not on treatment, and of those on treatment, less than 50 per cent have their blood pressure properly controlled.”

He said this statistic was called “the rule of halves” and applied across Europe but said Ireland was lagging behind in its methods of measuring blood pressure.

“We use old-fashioned techniques like the mercury sphygmomanometer, which is inaccurate.

“In 20 per cent of cases where someone is thought to have high blood pressure, what they actually have is white coat hypertension, meaning their blood pressure goes up because they are in a medical environment.

“What I advocate is 24-hour monitoring of blood pressure by little devices you can wear and these are becoming increasingly available. If we can control blood pressure, we could prevent half of the 10,000 acute strokes each year.”

There is no cure for high blood pressure, but it’s usually controllable with lifestyle changes and medication if required. When asked if they would prefer to take fewer tablets, four in five (80 per cent) of the people surveyed said they would. This is against an average of more than four tablets being taken per blood pressure patient for conditions including high blood pressure.

Novartis has launched a new text service that reminds people to take their medicine on time, available by visiting dontforget.ie.

A new website with information about high blood pressure has also been launched, bloodpressure.ie