A naturalistic study of hypertension in a rural U.K. community. 2 Years results

A naturalistic study was set up to screen, identify and treat hypertensive patients aged 20-60 years in a rural general practice. 3,222 patients (92%) of a stable population of 3,489 were screened by 2 nurse research assistants and of these 455 patients (14%) were found to be hypertensive or borderline hypertensive. After careful assessment, 192 of these patients were found suitable for treatment and subsequently 138 entered the study. Two well recognised treatment regimes were used and no significant difference between patient response resulted. 84 patients (60.9%) completed the 2 year duration of the study discussed here. The cost of the study is not feasible in an average general practice, but day to day running of such a project, run along clearly defined treatment regimes was managed easily by 2 research assistants: this reduced, therefore, the work load on individual general practitioners.