Knowledge of Vascular Age Contributes to Improve the Collaboration Between Community Pharmacies and Primary Health Care Physicians in Reducing Blood Pressure in Hypertensive Patients.

Cardiovascular diseases are the main cause of death worldwide and elevated blood pressure (BP), called hypertension (HTN), is the principal and most frequent factor for suffering cardiovascular diseases. Recent studies show that approximately five out of 10 adults in Europe have increased BP or will develop HTN in their life-course. Unfortunately, screening programs for establishing the diagnosis of HTN do not exist. As a result, almost half of hypertensive patients do not know that their BP is elevated. Regarding the other half of subjects, who have been already diagnosed of HTN and are aware of their condition, up to 50% of them are not adequately controlled, although successful treatment of HTN is possible. There are several reasons explaining why at the end only one quarter of the hypertensive population achieves normal BP values. Firstly, there is a lack of patients´ adherence to the prescribed treatment. In other words, many patients do not take their pills as ordered, mostly because they do not realize the health risks associated with HTN, as elevated BP does not hurt nor lead to clinical symptoms. As a matter of fact, many hypertensive patients do not comply with their prescribed treatments. Secondly, the mere fact of prescribing drugs for reducing elevated BP is very often considered enough by the treating general practitioners, not having into account that the target blood pressure values are not achieved. This attitude is called therapeutic inertia. And thirdly, there is a lack of efficient communication between those specialized groups of health professionals, which are involved in the management of HTN, i.e. general practitioners and community pharmacies. In the context of high BP, the concept of early vascular aging (EVA), presented roughly 10 years ago, has been widely adopted since. The concept of vascular age generally refers to a way of expressing cardiovascular risk as an estimated age, considered useful for improving the understanding of cardiova