Impact of hypertension on mortality and cardiovascular disease burden in patients with cardiovascular risk factors from a general practice setting: the ESCARVAL-risk study.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the attributable risk associated to hypertension for all-cause mortality and cardiovascular hospitalization endpoints in a prospective study of patients with at least one cardiovascular risk factors participating in the Estudio Cardiovascular Valencia-risk project, we also evaluated the attributable risk associated with other risk factors and risk factor clustering. METHODS: Prospective electronic health recording-based study in a Mediterranean population that included 52 007 cardiovascular disease-free men and women aged 30 years or older (mean age 62.6 year) with hypertension (79.0%), diabetes mellitus (37.3%), or dyslipidemia (88.2%), who underwent routine health examinations. All-cause mortality and hospitalization records for coronary heart disease (CHD) or stroke were collected. RESULTS: During an average follow-up time of 3.2 years, 928 deaths and 1682 and 1529 hospitalizations for CHD and stroke, respectively, were recorded. In both men and women, hypertension significantly increased the multiadjusted rates of death and CHD and stroke hospitalizations. Hypertension was associated with a substantial amount of avoidable deaths both in men and women, population attributable risks were 41.81 (95% confidence interval 28.02, 53.24)% and 37.84 (5.74, 61.51)%, respectively. Similarly, the population attributable risk of hospitalization for CHD and stroke associated to hypertension was among the highest in both the sexes as compared with the impact of the other main cardiovascular risk factors. Increasing cardiovascular risk factors clustering was associated with increasing burden of disease. CONCLUSION: Our results highlight the relevance of hypertension as main risk factor for mortality and cardiovascular events in a real-life setting. Although our data support the ongoing need of cardiovascular risk factors prevention, intensified actions for primary prevention of hypertension show potential to largely reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease.