About Hypertension:
Prevalence, Costs, and Control

According to the seventh report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure (JNC 7), current control rates for hypertension in the United States are clearly unacceptable.¹
Nearly 1 in 3 adults (30%) in the US has hypertension. However, only about 33% of all those with hypertension have their blood pressure controlled, defined as <140/90 mm Hg in non-diabetic patients or, for patients with diabetes, <130/80 mm Hg.²

Hypertension control rates, while improving, continue to be low despite the fact that 78% of Americans were aware that they had hypertension in the period 2005-2006.³ The estimated cost of cardiovascular diseases and stroke in the United States for 2008 is $448.5 billion. This figure includes direct costs (eg, physicians/other healthcare providers, hospital/nursing home care, home healthcare, medications and medical durables) as well as indirect costs, including lost productivity resulting from morbidity and mortality.⁴


An estimated $69.4 billion, or 21%, can be directly attributed to hypertensive disease. This is larger than the costs associated with stroke ($65.5 billion) or heart failure ($34.8 billion).⁴

The Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure provides a classification of BP for adults aged 18 years and older composed of four categories: normal, prehypertension, stage 1 hypertension, and stage 2 hypertension.¹
Prehypertension is not a disease category, but rather a range of BP values that can be used to identify individuals at high risk of developing hypertension. The JNC 7 states that individuals who are prehypertensive are not candidates for antihypertensive drug therapy.¹

The JNC 7 recommends treating systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) to targets that are less than 140/90 mm Hg, which may help to avoid future complications. For hypertensive patients with diabetes or renal disease, the BP goal is less than 130/80 mm Hg.¹ Patients, healthcare systems, and even healthcare providers can create barriers to control.^1,5 Read about the barriers to blood pressure control.