RESUMO

Arterial hypertension in elder people is a common problem reaching a prevalence of 60 to 80 percent in persons older than 60 years old. We carried out a transversal observational descriptive study, during the period from January 1 st to December 31 st 2006, at the doctor´s offices of Barrio Adentro mission of the Integral Communitarian Health Area # 7, municipality of Villalba, in Nueva Esparta State, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. We studied 240 hypertensive people older than 60 years old, corresponding with the universe, and analyzed variables allowing us to characterize the disease in the cases according to age, genre, etiologic classification, level, risk facts and target affected organ. Data were obtained from the medical records, questionnaires and medical examination. The 70-to-79-years-old group with 47 percent, and the female genre with 61, 25 percent had the higher percentages. Among the risk facts, the highest percents corresponded to smoking, obesity and sedentarism. According to the etiologic classification, 91 percent corresponded to primary, and Grade I with 70 percent. 83,75 percent of the studied patients had lesions in the target organ and the retina was the most affected one, followed by heart and brain.