Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Journal of Hypertension Volume 2013, Article ID 165789, 8 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/165789 Clinical Study Effect of Antihypertensive Therapy on SCORE-Estimated Total Cardiovascular Risk: Results from an Open-Label, Multinational Investigation—The POWER Survey Guy De Backer, 1 Robert J. Petrella, 2 Assen R. Goudev, 3 Ghazi Ahmad Radaideh, 4 Andrzej Rynkiewicz, 5 and Atul Pathak 6 1 Department of Public Health, Ghent University Hospital, DePintelaan 185, 9000 Ghent, Belgium 2 Department of Family Medicine and Cardiology, Lawson Health Research Institute, 801 Commissioners Road East, University of Western Ontario, ON, Canada, N6C 5J1 3 Preventive Cardiology Clinic, Department of Internal Medicine, Medical University of Sofa, Sofa 1431, Bulgaria 4 Rashid Hospital, P.O. Box 4545, Oud Metha Road, Dubai, UAE 5 Department of Cardiology, Medical University of Gda˜ nsk, M. Skłodowskiej-Curie 3a Street, 80-210 Gda˜ nsk, Poland 6 Clinical Pharmacology Service, INSERM Unit 1048, Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital Toulouse, 31073 Toulouse, France Correspondence should be addressed to Guy De Backer; guy.debacker@ugent.be Received 19 March 2013; Revised 21 May 2013; Accepted 4 June 2013 Academic Editor: Kazuomi Kario Copyright © 2013 Guy De Backer et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background. High blood pressure is a substantial risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Design & Methods. Te Physicians’ Observational Work on patient Education according to their vascular Risk (POWER) survey was an open-label investigation of eprosartan-based therapy (EBT) for control of high blood pressure in primary care centers in 16 countries. A prespecifed element of this research was appraisal of the impact of EBT on estimated 10-year risk of a fatal cardiovascular event as determined by the Systematic Coronary Risk Evaluation (SCORE) model. Results. SCORE estimates of CVD risk were obtained at baseline from 12,718 patients in 15 countries (6504 men) and from 9577 patients at 6 months. During EBT mean (±SD) systolic/diastolic blood pressures declined from 160.2 ± 13.7/94.1 ± 9.1 mmHg to 134.5 ± 11.2/81.4 ± 7.4mmHg. Tis was accompanied by a 38% reduction in mean SCORE-estimated CVD risk and an improvement in SCORE risk classifcation of one category or more in 3506 patients (36.6%). Conclusion. Experience in POWER afrms that (a) efective pharmacological control of blood pressure is feasible in the primary care setting and is accompanied by a reduction in total CVD risk and (b) the SCORE instrument is efective in this setting for the monitoring of total CVD risk. 1. Introduction Elevated blood pressure is a powerful contributor to total cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. Clinical trials’ experience supports the expectation of reduced cardiovascular risk from blood pressure control [1]. However, blood pressure control should not be applied in isolation. Rather, total CVD risk should be estimated in order to adapt the nature and intensity of preventive strategies to the circumstances of individual patients. A range of risk prediction models have been proposed for this purpose. One such is the Systematic Coronary Risk Evaluation (SCORE) model [2]. Tis instrument, designed for use in primary prevention, estimates the total risk of fatal CVD events over the next 10 years as a function of age, gender, systolic blood pressure (SBP), total cholesterol, and smoking habits. Eprosartan (Abbott Products Operations AG, Allschwil, Switzerland) is an orally administered, nonpeptide, angiot- ensin-receptor blocker widely approved within the European Union and in the USA for the treatment of hypertension. Te Physicians’ Observational Work on patient Education according to their vascular Risk (POWER) study created