Giuseppe Mancia
Editor
2013
Several reasons make resistant hypertension an issue of major current interest. To mention just a few, this condition (which is defined as absence of blood pressure control despite multidrug treatment at adequate individual drug doses) is by no means rare. Although varying with the clinical setting in which resistant hypertension is studied, the consensus is that this condition may affect about 10% of the overall hypertensive population, which amounts to more than 6 million patients in the USA and more than 10 millions in Europe. Secondly, patients with resistant hypertension have a high cardiovascular risk, with a much greater chance of developing heart failure, cerebrovascular or coronary disease, and endstage renal disease than patients in which blood pressure is more easily controlled.