Aportaciones científicas más relevantes del XVII Congreso de la Sociedad Europea de Hipertensión. Milán, 15-19 de junio de 2007

In this paper, we review the main advances reported in the XVII European Society of Hypertension Meeting, held in Milan on June, 15-19, 2007. The most relevant contribution was the presentation of the new guidelines for the management of hypertension from the European Society of Hypertension and the European Society of Cardiology. This new guideline is an up-date of the previous one published in 2003. It offers some changes regarding both diagnosis and management, highlighting the inclusion of metabolic syndrome as an indicator of high cardiovascular risk. In addition to the presentation of these new guidelines, other important contributions to the meeting have been the evidences obtained with the Spanish ABPM Registry, new data on the effect of antihypertensive treatment on target organ protection and on the progression of the disease, and the introduction of a new therapeutic class, the direct renin inhibitors, producing a suppression of the renin-angiotensin system at a different level from current therapeutic options.