Objective: To assess the prevalence, awareness, treatment and control of hypertension for men and women living in three French regions.
Design: A cross-sectional population survey.
Setting: Subjects in the World Health Organization Monitoring Trends and Determinants in Cardiovascular Disease population surveys of Bas-Rhin, the urban community of Lille and Haute-Garonne, France.
Subjects: We studied 1924 men and 1874 women aged 35-64 years.
Main outcome measures: Hypertension was defined as a systolic blood pressure > or = 160 mmHg, a diastolic blood pressure > or = 95 mmHg, being administered antihypertensive drug treatment or any combination of the foregoing. Treated hypertensive subjects were considered controlled if their systolic blood pressure was < 160 mmHg and their diastolic blood pressure was < 95 mmHg.
Results: The prevalence of hypertension was 40.2, 43.8 and 27.7% among men in Lille, Bas-Rhin and Haute-Garonne, respectively. For women, the corresponding values were 31.5, 33.8 and 18.9%. Among hypertensive men, 51.8% were aware of their condition, 30.0% were being administered drug treatment and 9.2% were controlled; the respective values for hypertensive women were 69.8, 51.2 and 25.3% (P < 0.001). Awareness of hypertension was associated with antihypertensive treatment more commonly in Haute-Garonne (81.0% for men and 84.7% for women). The percentages of treated subjects in whom adequate control of the blood pressure had been achieved were only 30.7% for men and 49.4% for women.
Conclusion: Women have a better awareness of hypertension than do men and their hypertension is controlled better but the low rate of control for both sexes calls for further improvements.