BARCELONA — Only two in five Americans with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease and one in five in European countries meet blood pressure goals, Benjamin A. Steinberg said at the joint meeting of the European Society of Cardiology and the World Heart Federation.
These findings, from a large contemporary international database, underscore the need for physicians to do much better at identifying and controlling high blood pressure in this high-risk population, Mr. Steinberg, a medical student at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, said in an interview.
He analyzed the CardioMonitor database for 1998–2004. The database is an annual survey of outpatients with cardiovascular disease in multiple countries relying on records provided by physicians and cardiologists. For the years 1998–2004, excluding 2002, when the survey wasn't conducted, the database included nearly 155,000 patients with cardiovascular disease in the United States and five European nations, of which 23,139 also had type 2 diabetes.
The prevalence of diabetes in cardiovascular patients rose during the years of the study. For example, the reported prevalence of type 2 diabetes in patients with cardiovascular disease doubled in France and the United Kingdom between 1998 and 2004; in the United States, it climbed from 15.1% to 20.5%. The Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation and Treatment of High Blood Pressure VII (JNC-VII) goal of a systolic blood pressure below 130 mm Hg was achieved by only 41% of American diabetic cardiovascular patients. European rates were far lower, Dr. Steinberg continued.