Guidelines are systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions, and are being used to describe care based on scientific evidence. However, presence of multiple guidelines on the same subject does not help physicians make the best decision about healthcare. In this paper we examined the more recent guidelines (GL) for the management of arterial hypertension: World Health Organization-International Society of Hypertension (WHO-ISH) GL, European Society of Hypertension-European Society of Cardiology (ESH-ESC) GL, British Hypertension Society (BHS-IV) GL, and the report of Joint National Committee (JNC-7) from USA. Some differences emerged on the definition of hypertension, the blood pressure targets and the thresholds for treatment, the quantification of cardiovascular risk, the choice of initial drugs. These differences are likely to be based on divergent opinions about the relationship between hypertension and global cardiovascular risk (CVR). In the JNC-7 report, hypertension is thought to be the mainstay of CVR, hence BP treatment is to be started, taking into account the entity of blood pressure values and apart from other risk factors (with the exception of diabetes and renal insufficiency). The other GL, particularly BHS-IV GL, establish the thresholds for the start of treatment mainly taking into account the global CVR. Actually, BHS-IV GL do not recommend the start of pharmacological treatment in mild hypertension, provided that the global CVR was lower than 20% in ten years. Moreover, the difference in definition of hypertension, BP targets, choice of starting drug, is likely to spring from this different view on hypertensionglobal cardiovascular risk relationship.