[Global treatment of cardiovascular risk in the hypertensive patient].

During 2006, new evidence supporting the need to adopt a global approach to the treatment of cardiovascular risk in hypertensive patients has been reported. It is increasingly clear that it is not sufficient to aim for optimum blood pressure control, which in any case is not easy to achieve, and that it is essential to treat all cardiovascular risk factors by using drugs with proven benefits, even when those benefits are supplementary to the drug's principal effects. In addition, drugs that could have a detrimental effect or that are, merely, less beneficial should be avoided or kept as a last resort.