Grant: Operating Grant

Hypertension is one of the most common conditions worldwide affecting more than 1 in 5 adult Canadians. More patients visit physicians and receive prescriptions for the treatment of hypertension than any other medical disorder, with over 4 million prescriptions for antihypertensive medication written each month in Canada. Although treatment of hypertension is associated with a 20-25% reduction in cardiovascular events, it is commonly unrecognized and under-treated. Policy makers and health care professionals have made extensive efforts to improve hypertension screening, detection and management through development of ongoing national knowledge translation strategies. Currently in Canada there is no mechanism to monitor the rates of occurrence of hypertension, its management, the heath care resource implications or the development of outcomes with current information limited to that obtained from survey data. We propose to develop a national surveillance system to monitor the occurrence of hypertension in Canada and to assess outcomes for patients newly diagnosed and treated for hypertension as well as to examine antihypertensive prescribing patterns for newly treated patients with hypertension. This information will allow for correlation to evaluate current hypertension education systems and potential insight into further resource development for improved health care education and patient care.