- Hypertension is a global problem, and in the US 1/3 of people have hypertension. 1/3 of people have hypertension and don't know about it, and almost half of the people do not have good control of hypertension. And, in fact, there is UK data that shows that almost 90% of people do not have control of hypertension to the 140 over 90 [recommended target]. Why hypertension continues to be such a global problem today? Hypertension's name is "silent killer" because you don't feel when your blood pressure is high and it causes all the damage to the organs. So if you don't feel bad - you don't go to the doctor, and you may be not convinced to get treatment [of high blood pressure] So this is a problem #1 with hypertension. Problem #2 is that we have enough medications to lower the blood pressure, but then people have side effects and not all tolerate the anti-hypertension drugs. And #3, even if you are convinced that you have to take the medications, if you don't suffer [from hypertension symptoms] - you forget to take medications. So if you have to take every day three or four drugs to lower the blood pressure and you don't feel something is wrong with you, then you forget to take the medications. So the main problem with control of blood pressure is what we call "noncompliance", which means that you don't take the drugs as requested, or you maybe have side effects and that's why you don't take medications. So we still have a problem [to treat hypertension]. We didn't find the good solution for all patients. I believe that if a patient complies with the treatment and you know how to treat hypertension, you can control 90% of the patients. Now the main problem is - recent American guidelines for hypertension define the lower blood pressure target than 140 over 90 - which is now 130 over 80. And if we go to this target, I believe that at least 50% of people with hypertension, if not more, will not have good blood pressure control despite anti-hypertensive medications. So hypertension is still killer #1 and the main point is that hypertension is a modifiable risk factor. And if you treat the high blood pressure well, you can prevent many problems in the future. So that's why we have to fight and explain and convince people how important it is to lower the blood pressure. That's why the patient education continues perhaps to be one of the major goals - educating people how serious and how dangerous it is to have the high blood pressure even though they don't feel it. People say, "I don't feel bad so I probably have no high blood pressure". But it is not true. You can have a very high blood pressure levels and you feel nothing. So it's very important to measure the blood pressure in order to know what is your real blood pressure.