No Time to Waste: in Support of Aggressive and Immediate Management of Hypertension

Untreated and uncontrolled hypertension (HTN) presents a major public health burden in the USA and worldwide. Despite the known risk for increased cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality, blood pressure remains untreated and uncontrolled at alarming rates of between 20 and 40 % in patients with known HTN. Further, while cumulative evidence indicates that early onset of antihypertensive effect improves CV outcomes, the time to blood pressure (BP) control remains long. The objective of hypertension management cannot be simply to achieve and maintain the goal BP, but to do so quickly to improve short-term and long-term CV outcomes. In this review, we will (1) describe the magnitude of uncontrolled HTN, (2) identify the factors that contribute to uncontrolled BP in patients with the diagnosis of HTN, and (3) explore the rationale for and benefits of aggressive and immediate control of HTN.