Alexandre Persu, cardiologist, secretary of the Belgian hypertension committee, was the guest of RTLINFO Welcome. He answered questions from our journalist Olivier Schoonejans.
How many Belgians suffer from hypertension?
This number is estimated at around 2.5 million Belgians, 30% of the world’s population. You imagine, you go down the street, one out of three or out of four people has high blood pressure and half of those people don’t know it.
They don’t know because they don’t have any symptoms following all. Is it a disease that does not cause symptoms?
Hypertension must be screened by the general practitioner. I would say from the age of forty, you should measure your blood pressure at the doctor’s office once a year, earlier if you have risk factors: obesity, overweight or a family history.
Hypertension causes direct and indirect deaths. Can we estimate them?
About 15,000 deaths per year are mainly due to myocardial infarction. And even more to cerebral vascular accidents which are also a cause of major disability.
Is this figure increasing or not?
Hypertension is beginning to be better treated, but its prevalence is increasing. So it’s really a real race once morest time to prevent this number of deaths from increasing. It’s never won, especially since less than half of hypertensive people are controlled today, so there’s still a long way to go… We have the necessary tools, but there are efforts to be made both on the both caregivers and patients.
If ever the doctor detects hypertension, what is the procedure to follow?
Hypertension cannot be diagnosed on a single measurement. So it will take several measures at the doctor. Ideally, a measurement under usual living conditions which can be a 24-hour blood pressure measurement or self-measurements by the patient at home, under the guidance of the doctor.
