Lack of a bridge between screening and medical management for hypertension: health screening cohort in Japan

  • PDF / 992,765 Bytes
  • 10 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
  • 73 Downloads / 164 Views

DOWNLOAD

REPORT


RESEARCH ARTICLE

Open Access

Lack of a bridge between screening and medical management for hypertension: health screening cohort in Japan Shingo Fukuma1* , Tatsuyoshi Ikenoue1, Yoshiyuki Saito1, Yukari Yamada1, Yusuke Saigusa2, Toshihiro Misumi2 and Masataka Taguri3

Abstract Background: Patient journeys for hypertensive individuals after detection at screening have not been well examined in a general population. Thus, we aimed to assess the medical treatment status and subsequent longitudinal changes in blood pressure in a middle-aged Japanese population. Methods: We conducted a cohort study using a nationwide Japanese health screening cohort, from April 2014 to March 2019. Among health screening participants aged 40–74 years who had not previously received treatment for hypertension, hypertensive patients were newly identified based on screening results, and their medical treatment status for hypertension during the year following their initial screening was assessed. The main outcomes were longitudinal changes in systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) over 4 years after initial screening. Results: Of the 153,523 screening participants (mean age = 49.7 years), 16,720 (10.9%) and 4150 (2.7%) were newly detected as having hypertension, with baseline SBP of 140–159 mmHg (grade 1) and ≥ 160 mmHg (grade 2–3), respectively. Among them, 15.9% of the grade 1 hypertensive participants and 36.3% of the grade 2–3 hypertensive participants started receiving medical treatment during the year following initial screening. A linear generalised estimating equation with propensity score matching showed that receiving medical treatment was associated with 5.77 mmHg lower SBP (95% CI − 6.64 to − 4.90) and 3.82 mmHg lower DBP (95% CI − 4.47 to − 3.16) in the grade 1 hypertensive group, and 14.69 mmHg lower SBP (95% CI − 16.35 to − 13.04) and 8.42 mmHg lower DBP (95% CI − 9.49 to − 7.34) in the grade 2–3 hypertensive group. Conclusions: Health screenings detected hypertension in a substantial percentage of the middle-aged population in this study. However, detection was often followed by insufficient medical treatment and inappropriate blood pressure management. These findings indicate an inadequate link between health screenings and medical treatments in patients with hypertension. Keywords: Hypertension, Untreated, Blood pressure management

* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Human Health Sciences, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, 53 Shogoin-Kawahara, Sakyo, Kyoto 606-8507, Japan Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this arti