Katarína Hatalová, Robert Hatala, Daniel Pella, Rastislav Šidlo
Modern treatment of hypertension is becoming more and more based on the use of fixed-dose combinations. Not only for the user friendliness of the therapeutic regimens, but mainly because of their high efficacy and positive influence on morbidity and mortality. The evidence-based medicine strongly favours the use of perindopril arginine/amlodipine – No. 1 in international guidelines in combination therapy of arterial hypertension. Slovak results from the scientific programmes Symbio I, II and III (study of optimized blood pressure lowering therapy with fixed combination of perindopril arginine/amlodipine) underline these facts. During the years 2009-2011 in the group of 9658 hypertensive patients (without or with additional coronary heart disease) 72 % patients reached normal blood pressure levels. Very few side effects were observed, including ankle oedema. The patient´s quality of life (assessed by the questionnaire) improved significantly. Slovak experience confirms excellent efficacy, good tolerability and low occurrence of side effects of the fixed-dose combination perindopril arginine/amlodipine used in treatment of hypertensive patients (irrespectively of the absence or presence of additional coronary heart disease in 25 % of patients).