Hypertension from Framingham to ALLHAT: Translating clinical trials into practice

ABSTRACT

Despite decades of observational and clinical data about the effectiveness of treating hypertension, most Americans are still not being adequately treated. It makes little sense that much of our efforts are directed toward performing large trials to find out whether newer, more expensive agents are superior to conventional therapy, especially when little evidence shows any benefit to the newer drugs. Rather, our priority should be to treat more patients and to treat them more aggressively.