Sammanfattning
Until recently, no morbidity-mortality study had examined the effects of "newer" drugs, like angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, calcium antagonists, and alpha-blockers compared to "old", but well-proven, thiazide diuretics, and beta-blockers in the treatment of essential hypertension. The prospective and randomised clinical trials, CAPPP, STOP-2, NORDIL, INSIGHT, and one arm of ALLHAT, with a total of about 58,000 middle-aged or elderly hypertensive patients have now been published. The primary outcome, composite cardiovascular (CV) death, cerebral stroke, and myocardial infarction, or composite fatal coronary heart disease and myocardial infarction, was the same, irrespective of the drug in all trials. Thus, prevention of CV complications depends on the lowering of blood pressure with well-tolerated medication, irrespective of class.