May Measurement Month 2018: an analysis of blood pressure screening results from Italy

Cardiovascular (CV) diseases are burdened by high mortality and morbidity, being re-sponsible for half of the deaths in Europe. Although hypertension is recognized asthe most important CV risk factor, hypertension awareness and blood pressure (BP)control are still unsatisfactory. In 2017, 30.6% of a>10 000 individual sample whotook part in the May Measurement Month (MMM) campaign in Italy was found to havehigh BP. To raise awareness on the hypertension issue and to report BP data on anation-wide scale in Italy. In the frame of the MMM campaign, an opportunistic cross-sectional survey of volunteers aged18 was carried out in May 2018. Blood pressuremeasurement, the definition of hypertension and statistical analysis followed thestandard MMM protocol. Screenings were conducted in multiple sites by health carepersonnel. Among the 5554 people screened (females: 48.3%, mean age58617 years) mean BP was 127/77 mmHg, and after imputations, 1462 (26.3%) par-ticipants were found to have high BP levels. Body mass index>25 was associatedwith higher systolic BP and diastolic BP (DBP), while diabetes was associated withhigh DBP only. Our data provide a nation-wide snapshot of BP control in a sample ofindividuals participating in a national health care campaign, and confirm the powerof this kind of healthcare-related activities in reaching a significant number of peo-ple to raise awareness on health topics. The apparent positive trend in BP controlcompared to available data from other similar campaigns carried out during the pastyears needs to be confirmed with more methodologically robust studies.