National Surveillance Definitions for Hypertension Prevalence and Control Among Adults

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Abstract
Background—Clear and consistent definitions of hypertension and hypertension control are crucial to guide diagnosis, treatment, and surveillance. A variety of surveillance definitions are in frequent use, resulting in variation of reported hypertension prevalence and control, even when based on the same data set. Methods and Results—To assess the variety of published surveillance definitions and rates, we performed a literature search for studies and reports that used National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) data from at least as recent as the 2003 to 2004 survey cycle. We identified 19 studies that used various criteria for defining hypertension and hypertension control, as well as different parameters for age adjustment and inclusion of subpopulations. This resulted in variation of reported age-standardized hypertension prevalence from 28.9% to 32.1% and hypertension control from 35.1% to 64%. We then assessed the effects of varying the definitions of hypertension and hypertension cont...