Gender differences in hypertension awareness, diagnosis and treatment

Abstract

Introduction: Hypertension is most important risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CD) and stroke, two of the leading causes of death in adults worldwide. Even though over last decade there has been improvement in increasing the awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension, undiagnosed and uncontrolled hypertension remain one of main public health challenges. In order to make progress in dealing with this problem it important to understand in which areas of the treatment strategy appropriate changes have not yet been implemented. First step to do this is to improve our understanding of the factors that affect the treatment and control of hypertension. International Guidelines for hypertension recommend the same hypertension management for both sexes, however studies reveal that there are actual differences in hypertension management. Purpose of the study: The aim of this study was to conduct a paper review to provide most comprehensive contemporary estimates of sex differences in the awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension. Material and method: A literature review was conducted in English language databases, based only on original articles, regarding awareness, control and treatment of hypertension, using key words: ‘hypertension’, ‘sex- differences’, ‘hypertension treatment’, ‘gender gap’, ‘public health’. Results and conclusions: Based on researched studies we can state that woman have higher awareness, treatment and control rates for hypertension than men worldwide [4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. This suggests that, the guidelines for the treatment and management of hypertension should be gender specific.

Keywords

• Public health
• sex difference
• hypertension
• cardiovascular disease