RESUMEN
Psychosomatic status was investigated in 104 patients with essential hypertension (EH) and 111 patients with secondary arterial hypertension (AH) of renal origin in the presence of chronic pyelonephritis. A significant heterogeneity of psychological characteristics was established in patients with these two clinical forms of AH. In EH patients psychological deviations were detected since very early stages of the disease, but they did not become more profound with stabilisation of blood pressure. At the same time the progress of secondary AH was accompanied by obvious deterioration of initially little-changed psychological status, which correlated with the gravity of somatic status, in particular, with the severity of left ventricular hypertrophy.