Blood Pressure Target Achievement Under Monotheraphy: A Real-Life Appraisal.

Despite hypertension guidelines suggest that the most effective treatment strategy to improve blood pressure (BP) target achievement is to implement the use of combination treatment, monotherapy is still widely used in the clinical practice of hypertension. To investigate BP control under monotherapy in the setting of real-life. We extracted data from a medical database of adult outpatients who were referred to the Hypertension Unit, Sant'Andrea Hospital, Rome (IT), including anthropometric data, CV risk factors and comorbidities, presence or absence of antihypertensive therapy and concomitant medications. Among treated hypertensive patients, we identified only those under single antihypertensive agent (monotherapy). Office BP treatment targets were defined according to 2018 ESC/ESH guidelines as: (a) < 130/80 mmHg in individuals aged 18-65 years; (b) < 140/80 mmHg in those aged > 65 years. From an overall sample of 7797 records we selected 1578 (20.2%) hypertensive outpatients (47.3% female, age 59.5 ± 13.6 years, BMI 26.6 ± 4.4 kg/m Our data showed a persistent use of monotherapy in the clinical practice, though with unsatisfactory BP control, especially in light of the BP treatment targets suggested by the last hypertension guidelines.