Study leader Emanuela Falaschetti from Imperial College London in the UK said: Although the rates of diagnosis, treatment, and control of raised blood pressure remain suboptimum in England, our findings are still a cause for optimism.
Whereas once the rule of halves prevailedhalf the general population with high blood pressure were diagnosed, half of those detected treated, and half of those treated controllednow management in England is better than the rule of two-thirds.
"As a result of these improvements in practice, several hundreds of thousands of major cardiovascular events might have been prevented.
Richard McManus from the University of Oxford in the UK and Jonathan Mant from the University of Cambridge, wrote in the journal: Many public health initiatives aim to reduce the population burden of hypertension and along with physicians in primary carewho provide most hypertension management in the UKhave led to substantial advances in hypertension management and blood pressure control.
"Falaschetti and colleagues study provides a welcome example of the combined effects of individual physicians and policy makers on a simple but important risk factor. After 50 years of treatment, it seems that the drugs are working."
Around one in three people in England have high blood pressure, defined as 140mm systolic over 90mm diasytolic or higher, and it is the single most important risk factor for an early death as it causes strokes and heart attacks.
The improvement in blood pressure in the general population is probably due to a reduction in salt intake, the researchers said, as average consumption has dropped from 9.5g per day in 2000/1 to 8.1g per day in 2011. However it still remains above the recommended 6g per day limit.
The team estimated that if the 2011 picture of blood pressure treatment and control were applied to 1994, between 68,000 and 100,000 major fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular events would have been prevented in 1994.
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55,000 strokes and heart attacks could be prevented in 2022 with better blood pressure control