A capacity audience of 180 physicians attended the 4th Asia Pacific Adalat® Expert Workshop. The unquestionable role of Adalat® in the management of hypertension was the underlying theme for the workshop, with particular focus on optimising treatment strategies for those patients with additional cardiovascular (CV) risk factors.
All the speakers underlined the need for more aggressive blood pressure (BP)-lowering therapy to maximise protection from CV events. The workshop provided an ideal platform to discuss current recommendations for the use of combination antihypertensive therapy to address this need, and an opportunity to outline the rationale, design and anticipated outcomes of the recently initiated TALENT (A Multicentre Study Evaluating Efficacy of Nifedipine GITS - Telmisartan Combination in Blood Pressure Control and Beyond: Comparison of Two Treatment Strategies) study.
Chairman Jyh-Hong Chen (Taiwan) reviewed the BP-independent benefits of Adalat® that contributed to the CV risk reduction observed in both the INSIGHT and ACTION trials. Peter Meredith (UK) summarised the data supporting guideline recommendations for the use of calcium channel blockers (CCBs) for disease prevention, with specific reference to Adalat®.
Clearly, in addition to BP-lowering effects when administered as a monotherapy, Adalat® is ideally placed as a combination treatment partner, and the forthcoming TALENT study should corroborate this further. Raised BP plays a pivotal role in the development and management of renal disease as well as being the most significant contributor to the pathogenesis of stroke.
Josep Galceran (Spain) focused on the importance of end-organ protection, using subanalyses data from INSIGHT and ACTION to demonstrate the benefits of Adalat®. Since a large proportion of the audience was nephrologists and neurologists, his presentation was highly relevant and well received.
To complete the programme, physicians were invited to participate in a case study session using interactive key pad voting. The case study raised a number of interesting questions regarding optimisation of BP control, and clearly helped to exchange clinical practices between the various countries and different areas of expertise.
