HYPERTENSION: Matching the right drug to the right patient in essential hypertension

In most hospitals, it is cardiologists to whom patients with difficult hypertension are referred. Although these patients may appear a distraction from the sicker patients in cardiac clinics, cardiologists will recognise hypertension as the most common cause of strokes, the most common reversible cause of cardiac failure, and more important than hypercholesterolaemia as a preventable cause of ischaemic heart disease in diabetes.1 The purpose of this review is to let cardiologists reap some of the fruits of the last two years in the hypertension world, where we now have more answers than questions about the objectives of treatment and how to achieve these, and (with a little didactic licence) we can relate treatment choices to a logical understanding of hypertension itself.#### Key points