Antihypertensive overtreatment in people 80 years old and older.

Background And Objective: To study the proportion of patients older than 80 years old with hypertension and pharmacological overtreatment.

Patients And Methods: Cross-sectional simulation study, including 281 patients older than 80 years old of primary prevention, randomly selected, with good control of hypertension (systolic blood pressure<150mmHg, diastolic blood pressure<90mmHg), treated with a maximum of 3 medications. Overtreatment was considered if at least one medication could be removed and good control persisted, calculating how the blood pressure would raise with Law's meta-analysis, which estimates blood pressure reductions by pre-treatment levels, number and dose of medications.