Prevalence, awareness, treatment and control of hypertension in employees of factories of Northern Greece: the Naoussa study

The objective of this study was to examine the prevalence and the levels of awareness, control, and treatment of hypertension in workers, technicians and clerks of factories of the city of Naoussa. A total of 1976 employees in 19 units were examined. From those, 1937 ( 1045 men and 892 women), 15-73 years of age, were included in the analysis. Every employee was examined twice with 1 week's interval between the two examinations. Analysis was performed using the 140/90mmHg hypertension threshold. In every visit, three blood pressure ( BP) measurements were taken with at least 1-min interval between them. In the analysis only the average BP of the second clinic visit was used. In total, hypertension prevalence was 30.5% (32.1% for men and 28.7% for women respectively, P = 0.10). The levels of awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension in hypertensive patients were 18.6%, 11.8%, and 2.2%, respectively. The levels of awareness and treatment differed significantly between men and women ( 13.4 vs 25.4%, P<0.001 and 9.6 vs 14.8%, P<0.05), but there was no difference in the levels of control (1.5 vs 3.1%, P = 0.18). Hypertension prevalence, awareness, and treatment differed also between patients <45 and greater than or equal to45 years of age (22.0 vs 53.2%, P<0.001, 9.7 vs 28.4%, P<0.001 and 6.5 vs 17.7%, P<0.001, respectively). In conclusion, the prevalence of hypertension in our study's population is high, while the levels of awareness, treatment, and control are disappointing and should be significantly improved. There is also a difference in awareness and treatment in favour of women compared to men and in favour of patients greater than or equal to 45 years of age compared to those < 45 years of age.