Clinical Trials in Hypertension Publisher: Informa Healthcare | 2001 | PDF | 680 pages | ISBN: 0824702700 | 7.2Mb One of the highlights among the remarkable achievements in medicine over the past four decades has been the development of antihypertensive agents. Since the introduction of these agents into clinical practice, cardiovascular mortality in this country has been reduced from a rate above 54 percent to a rate below 50 percent, an astounding and impressive statistic. This reduction in the overall rate of death due to cardiovascular causes can be attributed primarily to a reduction of more than 70 percent in the rate of death due to stroke and a reduction of more than 50 percent in the rate of death due to coronary heart disease. Moreover, the number of patients with hypertensive emergencies, which once accounted for a large number of hospital admissions, has been reduced so dramatically that hospitalizations for the related diagnoses are clinical rarities.
