High Blood Pressure: key points

• High blood pressure is a major risk factor for death, disease and health problems.
  
• It is very common. It is estimated that nearly a third of the population of Scotland aged 16 years and over has a raised blood pressure or a history of high blood pressure.
  
• Prevalence increases sharply with age. More than three quarters of those over 75 years have high blood pressure.
  
• A large proportion of those with high blood pressure do not attend their GP, or attend less frequently than once per year.

Table 1: Key statistics on high blood pressure in the population of Scotland aged 16 and over

	Males	Females	All
Number of cases in 2003 (1)	644,000	707,000	1,350,000
Prevalence (%) in 2003 (2)	33.0%	32.7%	32.8%
Number of deaths in 2003 (3)	6,100	6,700	12,800

(1) Estimated by applying the prevalence rate to the mid-year estimate for population 2003.

(2) From Scottish Health Survey 2003

(3) It is estimated in the WHO Comparative Quantification of Risk that around 22% of all mortality can be attributed to high (non-optimal) blood pressure.  Here we have estimated the number of deaths by applying this percentage to published for Scotland GROS deaths 2003.