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Objective: After the COVID 19 pandemic, the regular examinations of the patients with arterial hypertension were restarted in the ambulatory cardiological practice. 297 visits were done in one such outpatient clinic in the city center of Sofia, Bulgaria during the first 9 month of 2023. The aim of or study was to estimate the control rate of the office blood pressure and the hypertension mediated target organ damage, evaluated with echocardiography. Design and method: The patients were with mean age 62 years/18-87/.193 were women and 106 men. They were examined by cardiologist, an ECG was performed, and their office blood pressure was measured according to the ESH recommendations.Only 25 patients underwent 24 hours ABPM. According to the regulations of the National Health Care Fund, the patients with arterial hypertension should be referred for echocardiography every 2 years, so we analyzed the results, entered in their medical records. Results: 52% of the subjects were with good control of the office blood pressure/below 140/90 mm Hg/ and this percentage is comparable with the results from the recent real world data trails in Bulgaria. 71% of them fulfill the criteria for grade 1 diastolic dysfunction with E/A less than 1. 64% of the patients were with left ventricular hypertrophy, defined as left ventricular wall thickness greater than 11 mm. And 64% of them had LA diameter greater than 40 mm. Conclusions: Despite of the decent control of the office blood pressure almost 2/3 of the patients had data for hypertension mediated target organ damage from their routine echocardiography. This may be a result of the delay of the initiation of the therapy or more probably of the insufficient time under control That is why we must strongly encourage wider implementation of ABPM and home BP monitoring in ambulatory cardiology practice in Bulgaria.
Gruev et al. (Wed,) studied this question.