Arterial hypertension in family medicine

Abstract:

 Hypertension is the third cause of patient visits to a family physician and is an important independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Use of international and national expert guidelines for diagnosing and treating hypertension as well as monitoring of patients should facilitate the work of family medicine practitioners in the daily care of the patients. Despite their availability, as well as the availability of all groups of antihypertensive medications, achieving target arterial blood pressure values is not satisfactory. As the possibility of implementing the guidelines in everyday work is an important issue, they must be practical and applicable. Since family medicine doctors are the first contact physicians who care for and monitor most people with arterial hypertension, their extensive experience should be utilized by including them in in creating guidelines, in order to tailor the guidelines to the specifics of family medicine work and to achieve better success of the treatment. 

Key words:
arterial hypertension; family medicine; guidelines