Profile of the Romanian hypertensive patient data from SEPHAR II study.

Aim: The objective of this paper is to present the profile of the Romanian hypertensive patient as revealed by the analysis of hypertensive subjects from SEPHAR II survey.

Methods: A total number of 798 hypertensive subjects identified by SEPHAR II survey were analyzed in terms of socio-demographic characteristics, cardiovascular risk factors, subclinical target organ damage, established target organ disease, total CV risk and HT awareness, treatment and control. The profile of the Romanian hypertensive patients was built using the mod of every above mentioned target variables.

Results: The majority of hypertensive subjects were females (54.9%), mean age of 57.42 +/- 13.38 years, coming from the South region (17.8%), living in urban areas (59.5%) and aware of their condition (69.5%), associating most often other 4 CV risk factors among which physical inactivity (67.3%), visceral obesity (60.4%) and hypercholesterolemia (61.3%) are the most prevalent, having therefore a very high added CV risk (60.3%). Despite the widespread use of at least 2 antihypertensive drugs (72.3%), an effective treatment was recorded only in a quarter of treated hypertensives.

Conclusion: The profile of Romanian Hypertensive patient is: middle aged female living in urban area of the South region of the country, with secondary education and a low average income, sedentary lifestyle, nonsmoker and aware of BP values, having visceral obesity, a high total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol levels and normal HDL-cholesterol and triglyceride levels, having metabolic syndrome, nondiabetic and associating 4 other cardiovascular risk factors and therefore having a high added cardiovascular risk.