Learning the lessons (again) of the challenges of conducting sham-controlled device trials in hypertension

More people in Europe are likely to have died from hypertension-associated cardiovascular disease during the COVID-19 pandemic than from COVID-19 itself12. As we look back at a pandemic that caused so much harm – economic, social, and health-related – readers would be forgiven for not noticing that for decades we have been living through a slow-motion global epidemic of hypertension that shows no signs of abating.

The leading cause of premature death in the world is hypertension, which begs the question “how well are we doing at treating it?” Not very well is the answer. In the ...