Important facts:

· As many as 65 million Americans age 6 and older have high blood pressure
· Nearly one in three U.S. adults have high blood pressure.
· High blood pressure (hypertension) killed 49,707 Americans in 2002. It was listed as a primary or contributing cause of death in about 261,000 U.S. deaths in 2002. High blood pressure is a risk factor for heart attack and the greatest single cause of stroke. It affects over 36 percent of adult non-Hispanic blacks.
· More than 40 percent of African Americans have high blood pressure.
· African-Americans are 1.5 times more likely to die from heart disease and 1.8 times more likely to experience a fatal stroke than any other group and a 4.2 times greater rate of end-stage renal disease. Thirty percent of people with high blood pressure don't know they have it.
· Of all people with high blood pressure, 11 percent aren't on therapy (special diet or drugs), 25 percent are on inadequate therapy, and 34 percent are on adequate therapy.
· The cause of 90–95 percent of the cases of high blood pressure isn't known; however, high blood pressure is easily detected and usually controllable.

Source: www.americanheart.org