difficult-to-treat or resistant hypertension etiology, pathophysiology, and innovative therapies难治性或抗高血压的病因、病理生理学和创新疗法.pdfVIP

SAGE-Hindawi Access to Research International Journal of Hypertension Volume 2011, Article ID 438198, 4 pages doi:10.4061/2011/438198 Editorial Difficult-to-Treat or Resistant Hypertension: Etiology, Pathophysiology, and Innovative Therapies Vasilios Papademetriou,1 Costas Tsioufis,2 Alan Gradman,3 and Henry Punzi4, 5 1 Cardiovascular Research, VA Medical Center, 50 Irving Street NW, Washington, DC 20422, USA 2 First Cardiology Clinic, Hippokration Hospital, University of Athens, 114 Vassilissis Sofias Avenue, Athens 11527, Greece 3 Division of Cardiology, Temple University School of Medicine; Clinical Campus, Pittsburgh, PA 15232, USA 4 Trinity Hypertension Research Institute and Metabolic Research Institute, Punzi Medical Center, Carrollton, TX 75006, USA 5 Department of Family and Community Medicine, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX 75390, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Vasilios Papademetriou, v.papademetriou@ Received 23 March 2011; Accepted 23 March 2011 Copyright © 2011 Vasilios Papademetriou et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Despite the many therapeutic options available today for the treatment of hypertension, a sizable number of patients still remain resistant to treatment. The prevalence of resistant hypertension in the general population under optimal conditions is about 3–5%. Although several factors and conditions can be identified and corrected a percentage of hypertensive patients remain with unacceptably high blood pressure levels. The high prevalence of hypertension in the general population renders this small percentage significant, in