Abstract
BACKGROUND: According to the World Health Organization in 2015, 40 million out of the 56 million deaths recorded worldwide (70%) were due to non-communicable diseases. These were mainly cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes. METHODS: A prospective descriptive study was conducted from October 2018 to March 2019. Availability of the files in the department's archives store for medical records and availability of trained physicians to perform diagnosis and treatment of HBP were the criteria used to select departments to be included in the study. RESULTS: Patients data were recorded from internal medicine department (59.8%), emergency department (18.1%) gynaecology and obstetrics department (13.3%) and surgery department (8.6%). The mean age of the patients who were hospitalised in the study period was 54 years (SD±10.2) with extremes of 18 and 104 years. The modal class was the age group of 50 to 60 with 24.4% of cases. Among patients who were hospitalised, 3.6% (127) had essential hypertension, of which 57.4% (73) were women. CONCLUSION: Notable percentage of patients hospitalized at the University Hospital of Kamenge had essential hypertension. However, patients' knowledge of their hypertensive status had no positive contribution to its management.