A Study to Find Out the Prevalence of Asymptomatic Hypertension in School Going Children Between 5–10 Years of Age

In the past two decades, there has been a conceptual change regarding blood pressure measurement in paediatric age group and subsequent development of adult essential hypertension. The routine paediatric blood pressure measurement and its national as well as regional norm publication help us to detect not only fair number of asymptomatic hypertension secondary to formerly undetected disorder but also establishes that mildly elevated blood pressure during childhood were more common than previously recognized particularly in adolescents. Hypertension observed in some children secondary to underlying diseases like renal and endocrine diseases whereas in other cases raised blood pressure may indicate early onset of essential hypertension. Clinically hypertension in children occurs less frequently than in adults but several evidences support that the roots of essential hypertension extends back to early childhood. The awareness of regular blood pressure measurement in paediatric age group was established following publication of first report of the Task Force in Blood Pressure Control on children in 1977. In developed and industrialized country hypertension is a major public health issue involving approximately 20% of adult population compared to paediatric population where the value is 1-3%. The mortality and morbidity related to hypertension are due to atherosclerosis, diabetes, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and end stage renal disease. There is a rising trend of asymptomatic hypertension among school going children. Keeping this in mind, I have designed this study to find out the prevalence of asymptomatic hypertension among school going children in Kolkata, WB. The objectives of this study were to determine the prevalence of asymptomatic hypertension among school going children between 5-10 years of age, to identify the proper techniques for blood pressure measurement, to prepare distribution curves of blood pressure by age and sex and to recommend blood pressure ranges for children denoting normal, high normal and hypertensive for guarding against inappropriate labelling of hypertensive who are actually not hypertensive.