Medical efficacy of a cooperative prevention programme of arterial hypertension.

The study included 43,197 men aged 40-54 years, of whom 23,378 were in the intervention group and 19,819 in the comparison group; the number of man-years of follow-up totalled for the whole group 177,703. The study proved the efficacy of active, predominantly secondary prevention of arterial hypertension (AH), carried out in men aged 40-54 years over a period of 3-5 years in 12 centres within the framework of the cooperative programme. In comparison with the control group, the following changes were registered in the intervention group: 1) overall mortality decreased by 17.3%; 2) stroke mortality decreased by 48.4%; 3) non-lethal stroke morbidity decreased by 51.4%; 4) morbidity of non-fatal myocardial infarction decreased in the course of four years by 23.8%. In contrast to this, mortality due to ischaemic heart disease was in the intervention group and in the control group practically the same.