Background and objective: The aim of this study was to know the treatment of hypertensive patients with metabolic syndrome (MetS) attended in primary care setting, as well as the blood pressure and LDL-cholesterol (LDL-c) rates, and to compare these data with those of the hypertensive population without MetS.
Patients and method: We analyzed the subset of patients with MetS from those included in the PRESCOT study (a cross-sectional study of hypertensive subjects >18 years attended in primary care). The PRESCOT population was composed by 12,954 patients (49.9% females; 62.1+/-10.7 years). MetS was diagnosed according to NCEP-ATP-III criteria.
Results: 6,736 (52%) patients fulfilled diagnosis criteria of MetS (mean age 62.3+/-10.5 years; 43.9% males). Almost all MetS patients (98.2%) were on any medication, and 80.5% were at least on two drugs. Despite hypertensive MetS patients were treated with more antihypertensive medications (45.3% vs 36.6% were on two or more drugs, p < 0.001) and used more lipid-lowering agents (43% vs 39.1%, p < 0.001) than patients without MetS, the blood pressure control (according to European guidelines) and LDL-c control (according to NCEP-ATP III) rates were lower in patients with MetS (17.2% vs 33.6% and 17.2% vs 35.7%, p < 0.0001). Only 4.7% of patients with MetS were adequately controlled for both factors, LDL-c and blood pressure, vs 13.5% of patients without MetS, (p < 0.0001).
Conclusions: The presence of MetS in the hypertensive population attended in Spanish primary care settings is very common. Even though in hypertensives with MetS more drugs are prescribed, blood pressure and LDL-c control rates are worse in this population than in patients without MetS.