Aim. To prove the advantage of the long-term controlled antihypertensive therapy compared with the real usual standard therapy in patients with mild to moderate arterial hypertension.

Material and methods. It was multicenter, randomized, prospective parallel-group study in patients with mild to moderate hypertension. One part of patients (treatment group) received the strongly regulated stepped antihypertensive therapy based on ACE-inhibitor spirapril, the second one (control group) continued their usual standard therapy prescribed by doctors of polyclinics or other patient care institutions. The study lasted one year.

Results. 1742 patients were enrolled in the study, 854 patients were included in the treatment group and 888 – in the control group. 220 patients dropped out of the study by different reasons, and 1552 patients finished the study. There were 651 (37,6%) men and 1081 (62,4%) women. It was substantial decrease in blood pressure in both group, but distinctions between systolic and diastolic blood pressure in the treatment and control group during the study were significant.

The target levels of blood pressure (systolic < 140 mm Hg and diastolic < 90 mm Hg) were registered substantially more frequent in the patients of treatment group than in control group (69,4% и 39,3% after three months and 83,6% и 66,9% after 12 months of the treatment correspondingly).

Conclusion. Controlled stepped antihypertensive therapy resulted into more significant decrease in systolic and diastolic blood pressure and more frequent achievement of target levels of blood pressure in comparison with control group. It supposes better prognosis of patients.