About 30% of the world adult population is affected by hypertension in industrialised countries. Elevated arterial pressure is the major cause of cardiovascular mortality and international guidelines emphasise the benefits of reducing blood pressure. The current antihypertensive strategies may reduce by 20-30% the cardiovascular risk of hypertensive patients when this efficacy is measured in clinical trials in comparison with placebo. A precise world-wide estimation of this efficacy both in term of patient burden and healthcare costs is not available; however, a recent analysis suggests that the world-wide cost of hypertension associated cardiovascular complications is around 1,000 billions dollars. Therefore, effective improvement in the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension can provide the most significant contribution to the decrease of cardiovascular mortality and reduction of the world-wide costs associated to treatment of hypertension complications.