Abstract
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) represent a significant health problem in all countries world-wide and in the developed world, including the Czech Republic, in particular. The underlying cause in the majority of CVD patients is atherosclerosis and its complications, respectively. The present paper focuses on prevention and timely treatment of atherosclerosis. Management should be comprehensive and should target the risk factors (RF). Hypertension, hyperlipoproteinaemia and dyslipidemia (HLP and DLP), type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), visceral fat obesity and cigarette smoking are the dominating RFs. Even though all RFs have to be managed simultaneously and it is not possible to focus on just one of them, for the sake of clarity, this paper discusses hypertension and the use of telmisartan, a representative of one the most up-to-date group of antihypertensives. There is a growing evidence that it is not always just a reduction of a specific risk that is important but also the mode of treatment. For example, to reduce a CV risk in a patient with hypertension but also, for example, with metabolic syndrome, it is more beneficial to treat the patient with rennin-angiotensin system (RAS) blocking agents, possibly in a combination with calcium channels antagonists, than to use "traditional" (older) treatment approach with a combination of a beta/blocker and diuretic. Among the RAS-modifying agents, ACE inhibitors and sartans are the most widely used. Among sartans, telmisartan is very well-tolerated and has evidence from a large interventional study for its effect on reducing the CV risk.
