◆Dissemination of European Guidelines


Describing another variance from the JNC 7 Guidelines Committee, Professor Mancia said that the European committee believed that it had to produce the full report first, explaining the reasons for its recommendations, and then produce the simple version later. (The JNC 7 guidelines have appeared only in an "express" version in the spring of 2003, with the full version not expected until later in the year.)

It is Professor Mancia's opinion that most countries will translate and make use of these new European guidelines. A pocket version will be available, in English, in summer of 2003, and Mancia hopes that the guidelines will be translated into many languages, as there is no copyright on the main guidelines. (However, each version should be checked and sanctioned by the relevant national hypertension society, in order to retain quality and accuracy.)

Professor Mancia acknowledged the difficulties in persuading European general practitioners to adopt even the simplified guidelines, given the limited amount of time they have to spend with each patient (estimated recently as 6 minutes per patient in the United Kingdom). "Studies show that most physicians do not really assess global cardiovascular risk and when they do, they underestimate it," Professor Mancia admitted. "This will have to change in the future if we really want to improve treatment and cardiovascular prevention."

编辑 郑麓薇