The study by Ramakrishnan et al is a timely effort to estimate the burden of hypertension in the country.1 However, certain points should be considered before interpreting the results. The first is silence about sampling technique. As it was on voluntary basis, it might happen that most of the participants are already conscious about hypertension. Number of such camps in different states/UTs were not mentioned. When national prevalence was aimed, Uttar Pradesh and Sikkim cannot have similar contribution in the study, just because they are not comparable, in terms of population. The urban-rural difference is not clear from the article. The study reported a higher awareness among the subjects. As mentioned in the article, the sample was mostly limited to working class, therefore extrapolating the result to entire country may be difficult. Only one-third of the participants were female, which is again another setback for the study.
Still, the effort is laudable as several states/UTs were represented in the study. Future studies are expected to be more comprehensive, taking a cue from the present one.
Conflict of interest
There is no conflict of interest.
Reference
- 1.Ramakrishnan S., Zachariah G., Gupta K. Prevalence of hypertension among Indian adults: results from the great India blood pressure survey. Indian Heart J. 2019;71:309–313. doi: 10.1016/j.ihj.2019.09.012. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]