[Quality of antihypertensive drug prescription in a health area].

Objective: To find the compliance with previously established criteria on the quality of prescription of medication for hypertension.

Design: Retrospective and concurrent evaluation study of scientific and technical quality, with processing data, using as data source the clinical history.

Setting: Primary care teams in a Madrid Health Area.

Participants: 873 clinical histories of hyper-intense patients in treatment with diuretics, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors and/or calcium antagonists were chosen through systematic probabilistic sampling with a randomised start.

Measurements And Main Results: Data on age, sex, recording of treatment, linked pathologies and situations conditioning the choice of medicine were gathered. Information on the defined use criteria of the various pharmacological groups was also collected. 1145 drugs were used on 873 patients. Most common were the thiazide diuretics (36%), followed by ACE inhibitors (34.4%), calcium antagonists (21%) and beta-blockers (8.6%). 72% of the patients were undergoing one single therapy. 89.7% of the cases (95% CI, 87.43-91.59) had the treatment correctly recorded in the clinical record. Of the 721 hyperintense patients over 59 years old, 70.3% (95% CI, 66.81-73.60) fitted the defined criterion for use of diuretics. 48.7% fitted the ACE inhibitor criteria defined (CI, 43.71-53.78); 85.7% the beta-blocker criteria (CI, 76.85-91.69); and 58.7% the calcium antagonist criteria (95% CI, 52.17-64.9).

Conclusions: The fit of the use of diuretics with the defined quality criterion is acceptable, while in the cases of ACE inhibitors and calcium antagonists the quality of prescription could be improved, while the use of beta-blockers is minimal.