Purpose: To evaluate the clinical relationship between Chagas' disease and primary arterial hypertension.
Methods: The study involved 878 chronic chagasic outpatients followed by the Chagas' Disease Study Group of the University Hospital (Unicamp), over a 15-year period. Initially, the age, gender, race, clinical form of Chagas' disease and the presence of hypertension were noted for each patient. Subsequently, the data for matched hypertensive and normotensive chagasic patients were compared.
Results: Of the chagasic patients 37% were hypertensive, of those, 65% had some form of heart disease compared to 49% in the normotensive group. Of those patients with Chagas' disease and arterial hypertension, 41% were blacks and 35% were caucasians. Fifty percent of the hypertensive chagasic patients were over 45 years old compared to only 29% of the non-hypertensive patients.
Conclusion: Most of the hypertensive chagasic patients were 45 or more years old and showed some degree of heart failure compared to the normotensive group.