Design and Rationale of the National Observational Multicentric Tunisian Registry of Hypertension: Protocol for Evaluating Hypertensive Patient Care in Clinical Practice

BackgroundThis study was designed to evaluate the care of hypertensive patients in daily clinical practice in public and private centers in all Tunisian regions. ObjectiveThis study will provide us an overview of hypertension (HTN) management in Tunisia and the degree of adherence of practitioners to international recommendations. MethodsThis is a national observational cross-sectional multicenter study that will include patients older than 18 years with HTN for a duration of 4 weeks, managed in the public sector from primary and secondary care centers as well as patients managed in the private sector. Every participating patient signed a consent form. The study will exclude patients undergoing dialysis. The parameters that will be evaluated are demographic and anthropometric data, lifestyle habits, blood pressure levels, lipid profiles, treatment, and adherence to treatment. The data are collected via the web interface in the Dacima Clinical Suite. ResultsThe study began on April 15, 2019 and ended on May 15, 2019. During this period, we included 25,890 patients with HTN. Data collection involved 321 investigators from 24 Tunisian districts. The investigators were doctors working in the private and public sectors. ConclusionsObservational studies are extremely useful in improving the management of HTN in developing countries. Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT04013503; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04013503 International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)DERR1-10.2196/21878