The challenge of blood pressure control in patients with ischaemic heart disease in Europe.

The goal of the paper is to summarize the current status of blood pressure management in patients with ischaemic heart disease. Recently published results from Europe and North America showed that about half of ischaemic heart disease patients have their blood pressure over 140/90 mmHg. Moreover, these data provide further evidence that poor hypertension management is common in a variety of healthcare settings. Although most ischaemic heart disease patients receive blood pressure-lowering drugs, still a large proportion of them does not reach the recommended treatment goals. During recent years, several attempts were made to improve the control of risk factors (among them blood pressure) in patients with ischaemic heart disease; however, none of them was definitively successful.