In France, nearly one in three adults suffers from high blood pressure and half of them do not know it, said Tuesday, May 16, Public Health France, deploring the lack of recent progress against this disease. Nearly 30% of adults are hypertensive, or 17 million people, says the health agency, which is based on two surveys in the general population and a survey of a panel of general practitioners and the National Health Data System.
High blood pressure is the most common chronic disease in France and an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease, she says. However, the knowledge, treatment and control of hypertension remain "suboptimal and have not improved recently, some indicators have even suffered a deterioration", regrets Public Health France. Thus, only one in two hypertensive people is aware of his disease. A figure that remains, according to the health agency, far below the level of knowledge reached in other European or North American countries.
1 in 4 patients has controlled blood pressure
For the agency, this lack of knowledge can be explained in particular by insufficiently efficient screening or the difficulty of understanding and accepting the diagnosis by patients when announcing the disease. Among patients, only one in four has controlled blood pressure, she continues. And if more than 1.6 million adults start antihypertensive treatment each year, "the Covid-19 crisis has had a significant impact with an 11% drop in these initiations in connection with a decrease in the use of care".
In 2020, this decrease was particularly significant among women (-16%), reaching even more than 30% decrease among those aged 75 to 84 compared to the decline observed among men (-5%). And in 2021, contrary to what was observed in men, no catch-up was observed in women. "Health policies in favor of the primary prevention of arterial hypertension, its screening, and its management must be put in place quickly to allow, as in other countries, a favorable evolution of the epidemiological indicators of the disease," concludes Public Health France.
