Detection and characteristics of hypertension patients admitted in 37 cardiology departments from 17 Sub-Saharan African countries

Background High blood pressure (BP) is a major risk factor for several common cardiovascular (CV) disease such as stroke, heart failure or chronic kidney disease. The Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) should face the highest rate of hypertension worldwide with an overall prevalence estimation of 46%. Due to scarce resources and inadequate healthcare provision, SSA have scarce hard data on treatment and control of high BP. Purpose To assess the detection and characteristics of hypertension patients admitted in hospitalizations 17 SSA countries Methods We conducted a transversal and longitudinal study in CV department of 37 hospitals from 23 cities in 17 SSA countries (10 low income: Niger, Guinea, Benin, Mali, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tchad, Burkina Faso, Togo, Burundi, Ethiopia and 7 middle income: Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal, Cameroon, Congo, Soudan, Mauritania, Gabon). The February study was designed by a multidisciplinary collaborative team of epidemiologists, pharmacists and cardiologists from Africa and France. This ongoing observatory included all inpatients in February from each year since 2016. Data including socio-demographic and clinical characteristics, causes of admission, clinical, biological, complementary examinations, treatments, length of stay and discharge diagnosis were collected by the investigating physicians. Hypertension and severity of hypertension were defined according to 2018 ESC/ESH guidelines and BP was measured twice using standardized method. All analyses were performed through scripts developed in the R software (4.0.3 (2020-10-10)) Results The study involved 4360 patients. Hypertension was measured on 1906 (43.7%) patients at admission. Proportion of patients with high BP in hospital increased from 42.2% in 2016 to 52.2% in 2021 (p Conclusion In patients admitted in cardiology departments, hypertension is a huge burden in SSA. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding sources: None.