Efficacy and safety of treatment of hypertensive patients with fixed combination perindopril/indapamide up to 102.5mg: Results of the FALCO FORTE programme

Background: The objective of theFALCOFORTEprogramme was to demonstrate the efficacy and safety of 3 months of therapy with the fixed combination perindopril/indapamide in hypertensive patients in everyday medical practice. Design and methods: Patients with blood pressure >140/90mmHgor with blood pressure >130/85mmHgand three or more risk factors were prescribed perindopril/indapamide 2.5/0.625mg or 5/1.25 mg. Dosage could be increased to 10/2.5mg at any time during the study. Results: Of the 2327 patients included, 69% of patients had been unsuccessfully treated with other antihypertensives, 4.6% had not tolerated previous antihypertensive treatments, and 26.8% were newly diagnosed hypertensive patients. Roughly half the cohort was at high or very high cardiovascular risk. After 3 months of therapy, systolic blood pressure decreased from 156.9 ± 13.7 to 132.3 ± 10.6mmHg (p < 0.0001) and diastolic blood pressure from 94.9 ± 8.2 to 81.3 ± 6.3mmHg (p < 0.0001). Target blood pressure was reached by 87.1%of patients. Similar changes from baseline were observed in patients with diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome or left ventricular hypertrophy (p < 0.0001).When blood pressure decreaseswere analysed by dose, changes frombaseline increased with increasing doses. Perindopril/indapamide waswell tolerated with no significant changes in laboratory parameters being observed. Quality of life improved significantly. Conclusions: Therapy with fixed combination perindopril/ indapamide was effective and well tolerated in a wide range of patients. © 2011 Adis Data Information BV. All rights reserved.